Word
Pulisco i calamai d'argento.
Meaning
I clean the silver inkwells.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Pulisco i calamai d'argento.
di
of, from
pulire
to clean
l'argento
the silver
il calamaio
inkwell
Questions & Answers about Pulisco i calamai d'argento.
Why is the plural of calamaio spelled calamai and not calamaii?
For masculine nouns ending in -io, the plural spelling depends on the stress. In calamaio, the stress is on the a, making the i unstressed. When the i is unstressed, you just drop the final o and keep a single i for the plural. You only double the i if the stress falls on it, like in zio (plural: zii).
Are there other common words that follow this exact same pattern as calamaio?
Yes, this pattern is very common with professions and objects ending in the suffix -aio. For example, fornaio (baker) becomes fornai, and operaio (worker) becomes operai.
Why is it d'argento instead of using a specific adjective for silver?
In Italian, the material something is made of is almost always expressed with the preposition di (of) followed by the noun for the material. Since argento begins with a vowel, di drops its i and takes an apostrophe.
A quick refresher: why is the verb conjugated as pulisco instead of pulo?