{"id":899,"date":"2025-11-27T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T08:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myitaliancircle.com\/blog\/?p=899"},"modified":"2025-11-27T10:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T08:37:11","slug":"preposizioni-articolate-in-italiano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myitaliancircle.com\/blog\/preposizioni-articolate-in-italiano\/","title":{"rendered":"Le preposizioni articolate: Understand Prepositional Contractions in Italian"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 5<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Bentornata grammatica! <\/em>We learned in our simple guide to Italian prepositions<\/a> that Italian has nine main prepositions: DI, A, DA, IN, CON, SU, PER, TRA, FRA. <\/strong><\/em>However, you may have noticed that these same prepositions often look and sound different in everyday Italian: they are combined with definite articles to form prepositional contractions – le preposizioni articolate.<\/em> We use definite articles a lot in Italian, so you will encounter prepositional contractions all the time, even in very simple sentences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prepositional contractions are everywhere<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Have a look at the titles in the posters below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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La spia che venne dal freddo – Nel nome del padre – Nella tana dei lupi – Alla ricerca di Nemo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dal, nel, del, nella, dei, alla<\/em> are all prepositional contractions – the combination of a preposition and a definite article. In Italian, the article changes depending on the gender, number, and sound of the word that follows, and so do prepositional contractions. If you are unsure about articles in Italian, you may want to review this post on definite articles<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main concept that you need to remember is that prepositional contractions follow the same rules of definite articles. <\/strong>When some prepositions are followed by an article, they are combined into prepositional contractions. Out of nine prepositions, only five (di, a, da, in<\/em>, su)<\/em> are contracted.<\/strong> Con, per, tra,<\/em> and fra<\/em> used to have contracted forms, but they are rarely used nowadays, so you can happily forget about them here!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to form prepositional contractions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How to form a prepositional contraction? First of all you have to choose the correct preposition, and then you add the definite article that goes with the noun you are talking about.<\/strong> You do this by paying attention to the first letters of the word that follows, and to its gender and number: is it masculine or feminine? Singular or plural?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n