Breakdown of Non è venuto alla festa per colpa della pioggia, che delusione.
non
not
che
what
a
to / at
venire
to come
la festa
the party
la pioggia
the rain
per colpa di
because of, through the fault of
la delusione
the disappointment
Questions & Answers about Non è venuto alla festa per colpa della pioggia, che delusione.
Why use per colpa della here instead of a causa della?
Why is there no Italian word for the "a" in "what a disappointment"?
When making exclamations with che (what) followed by a noun, Italian drops the indefinite article. So "what a disappointment" is simply che delusione, just as "what a beautiful day" is che bella giornata.
Venuto is the past participle of venire. Why does it take essere (è) as its helping verb here?
Venire (to come) is a verb of motion. In Italian compound tenses like the passato prossimo, intransitive verbs that indicate movement toward a destination almost always require essere instead of avere. Because it uses essere, the ending of venuto must agree with the subject (masculine singular).
How could we expand this sentence to practice the colloquial 'future in the past' from this lesson?
If you wanted to say "He promised that he would come, but he didn't come to the party," you could use the imperfetto for the promised action: Mi ha promesso che veniva, ma non è venuto alla festa. In spoken, colloquial Italian, the imperfetto (veniva) easily replaces the more formal past conditional (sarebbe venuto).
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