There's a group of words you'll use all the time in Italian, in nearly every sentence, in fact.

Words like two in and on in Italian are essential for talking about where you're going and where things are.

But in Italian, these can sometimes feel overly complicated because they hook up with other words.

Teachers and grammarians call these articulated

prepositions. So in this lesson you'll learn how to use these words in a natural way to talk

about everyday stuff in Italian. Hi, all of all right.

Hi everyone and welcome to learn Italian with Joy of Languages.

Hold on a minute, Katie.

Let's start with the most important thing.

What the heck is an articulated preposition? Yeah, Katie. Let's start with the most important thing. What the heck is an articulated preposition?

Yeah, sorry about that.

I have no idea why we need to use such scary words to talk about grammar.

But basically to say to the, for example, Italians smush these two words together to make one word.

So, for example, how would you say I go to the supermarket?

Vado al-supermarket.

So the al you hear-heer-heer is made up of two words, a which means two, and il, which means the little words.

Little words like a are called prepositions and they tell us the direction or position of something

usually. Then il is an article, which is basically just the fancy grammatical term for the word the

in this case. So when Italians smush together a preposition like a and an article like il, that's called an articulated

preposition. But you don't need to worry about the fancy grammar words like that. The most

important thing, of course, is actually to learn how to use them in everyday conversations,

which is what you'll do today.

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