Breakdown of Ci capite qualcosa di questo documento?
questo
this (masculine)
il documento
the document
di
of, from
qualcosa
something
Questions & Answers about Ci capite qualcosa di questo documento?
What does the ci add to capite in this sentence?
The ci here is part of the pronominal verb capirci. While capire just means "to understand," adding ci gives the strong nuance of "to make sense of" a situation or thing. You could technically just say Capite qualcosa, but Ci capite qualcosa is much more natural and idiomatic when asking if someone can make heads or tails of a confusing document.
Doesn't ci usually mean "about it"? Isn't it redundant if we already specify di questo documento?
It might seem redundant to an English speaker, but this ci is an example of "ci attualizzante". It doesn't literally replace "about this document" here; instead, it permanently fuses with the verb to create the specific meaning of "grasping a complex topic." It is perfectly normal in Italian to keep this fixed ci even when the topic itself is explicitly stated later in the sentence.
Why is the preposition di used for "about" instead of su?
With the verb capire (and capirci), the subject matter you are trying to understand is typically introduced by di. While su means "on" or "about" for general topics (like a documentary about history), when talking about making sense of a specific item or situation, the set construction is capirci qualcosa di.
The English translation says "anything," so why doesn't the Italian use or ?