"Our cat does not eat sugar."
Translation:Il nostro gatto non mangia zucchero.
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Why does the article "il" need to be in front of "nostro?" Why is "nostro" insufficient by itself?
With a few exceptions, the most notable one being close family members, you must use the determinate article before possessive pronouns; in some cases, for instance when the possessive is in predicate position (รจ mio, sono tuoi), it's optional or depending on context.
I put 'Nostro' because I was thinking of the cat as a family member! haha
I'm confused as well with the same question user "weasel31899" poses, as to why an article preceeds a possesive pronoun in some circumstances. User "f.formica" has helped us, here, but has not provided a sufficient and detailed answer. I would also be interested in learning about how this plays out in conversational Italian, whether the article is omitted or emphasized or blended in, etc.
I thought that gatto was masculine or gatte plural. I didn't know that there was the use of the feminine gatta?
I still don't understand why simply "nostro gatto" is not correct. I have many Italian relatives and I had never noticed during conversation that the use of the article 'il' would be obligatory in this type of sentence.
"Nostro gatto non mangia lo zucchero" Sounds correct to me. Can anybody correct me and explain why this wouldn't be correct.
That simply sounds like broken speech to an Italian ear, and no native Italian speaker would ever leave out the article before "nostro gatto".
Postponing the possessive is a common feature of Southern Italian variants, but not part of standard Italian with the exception of a few idiomatic forms; to quote Treccani, in Italian postponing the possessive adjective has a distinct meaning of emphasis and contrast (i.e. you could use that if you were implicitly comparing your cat to someone else's).
So it's not incorrect, and sometimes even accepted, as some sentences are shared with the reverse course, but we don't want students to learn and use that word order as if it were standard.
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No one says "Il gatto nostro". You can only say "Il nostro gatto".
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'Il nostro' refers to a singular, masculine object. 'Le nostre' refers to plural feminine objects. 'La nostra' refers to a singular, feminine object. and 'I nostri' refers to plural masculine, or mixed gender, or unknown gender objects.
