{"id":17950,"date":"2025-01-04T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-04T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/?p=17950"},"modified":"2025-02-11T17:36:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T22:36:42","slug":"tricky-italian-pronouns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/tricky-italian-pronouns\/","title":{"rendered":"Tricky Italian Pronouns"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTraduzione italiana<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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My mom, who was born and raised in Italy, speaks Italian with us most of the time, and our parents take us to Italy at least twice a year. I have also been attending summer camps in Friuli, Veneto and Tuscany since I was a preschooler.<\/p>

As a result, I am fully bilingual: when I speak Italian, I have no foreign accent and I conjugate even complex verbs correctly.<\/p>

However, there are a couple of TRICKY points of Italian grammar that took me years to master, because they are very challenging for English speakers. Honestly, my brother never seemed to have an issue with them, maybe because as the first born child he spent more time being spoken and read to by my mom when he was little. I, on the other hand, would chat and play with HIM when I was a toddler, and he would speak to me in English, not Italian (so let\u2019s just blame all my grammar mistakes on him \ud83d\ude09).<\/p>

The one thing that used to drive me CRAZY is the particle NE<\/strong>. (ne<\/span><\/strong>, and not n\u00e9<\/strong><\/span>, which just means \u201cneither\u201d or \u201cnor\u201d) Using this pronoun does not come natural to me or to most Americans, because we simply don\u2019t have an equivalent for it. NE means \u201cof them\u201d, or \u201cof it\u201d, which is something we don\u2019t often say in English.<\/p>

For example, if someone asks you how many siblings you have, and you reply \u201cI have two\u201d, in Italian you would say \u201c NE ho due\u201d (I have two OF THEM). Or if you ask \u201cdid you eat some bread?\u201d One might reply \u201cNE ho mangiato un pezzetto\u201d (I ate one small piece OF IT), while in English they would simply say \u201cI ate one small piece.\u201d<\/p>

NE can also mean \u201cabout it\u201d, as in \u201cnon NE so niente\u201d (I know nothing ABOUT IT), or \u201cNE sono sicuro\u201d (I am certain OF IT).
If this sounds hard, wait until I tell you about the combination CE NE, and even worse, CE N\u2019\u00c8 (ce ne \u00e8)\u2026 get ready for your brain to explode \ud83e\udd2f .<\/p>

First of all, you may already be familiar with the Italian particle CI, which basically means \u201cTHERE\u201d, but not when it follows the verb (in that case it is l\u00ec<\/strong>, or l\u00e0<\/strong>, as in \u201cil libro \u00e8 l\u00ec\u201d).<\/p>

We say CI when it (there) comes BEFORE the verb: for example, \u201csul tavolo CI sono tre libri\u201d (there are three books on the table).<\/p>

Now\u2026 are you ready? It gets worse \ud83d\ude08<\/p>

The particle CI is abbreviated into C\u2019 when the verb that follows begins with a vowel, as in \u201cc’\u00e8 un libro\u201d or \u201cc\u2019era un libro\u201d (there is\/was a book), and it even becomes CE before the particle NE! The cherry on the cake is that NE also gets abbreviated into N\u2019 before a vowel.<\/p>

I\u2019m not kidding \ud83e\udd23 I told you it was hard!<\/p>

We say:<\/p>

CI sono due libri
But
C\u2019\u00c8 un libro
But
CE NE ho due.
CE N\u2019\u00c8 uno solo.
Non CE N\u2019ERANO pi\u00f9, etc.<\/p>

That\u2019s all for today, I know it\u2019s challenging but\u2026 NON MOLLARE (don\u2019t give up!).<\/p>

Bianca<\/p>

Bianca is an 11th grader at Ramaz Upper School in NYC. She loves<\/strong>\u00a0reading fiction and listening to Shawn Mendes and Tate McRae. Her favorite subject is science and she plans on studying chemistry in college, followed by an apprenticeship in Florence or Grasse because her dream job is creating perfumes.<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traduzione italiana My mom, who was born and raised in Italy, speaks Italian with us most of the time, and our parents take us to Italy at least twice a…Read More <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[88,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17950"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17950"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17982,"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17950\/revisions\/17982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/italianlanguagefoundation.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}