"He loves her."

Translation: Lui la ama.

[Pixelstuff]

why not l'ama?

[confusedbeetle]

i wrote l'ama got a tick

[jmarzw]

LUI LLAMA. thats what i think when I see this

[blakepgh]

Yes, why not Lui l'ama. Why "la ama" It breaks the rules....

[Teresinha]

DUO accepted my "l'ama"...

[tom_vincenzo]

why not "le ama"?

[Ariaflame]

He loves to her? Or he loves them? That's what Lui le ama would mean.

[xyphax]

I made a simple clitics table

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw00FD60mORud3VtMkQyZmJ0MTA/edit?usp=sharing

to help wrap my brain around the use of the pronouns.

In this case looking at the le row helps to visualize what you are saying :-)

[SamsonEverton]

I wish I had seen this before, thankyou

[MoniQwee]

This helps a lot. Thanks for sharing.

[nicoladc89]

le ama in englis is "loves them"

[ChumiPepper]

I have a similar question to Pixelstuff. I wrote, "Lui l'ama." Wrong. Any advanced/native speakers to explain the two a's (la ama) in this case?

[nicoladc89]

L'ama is right. (I'm Italian)

[Minotaurxzer]

l'ama is "li ama" not "la ama."

[nicoladc89]

"l'ama" is both: "li ama" and "la ama"

[CraigPickering]

Why not lui ama la?

[nicoladc89]

"la" must be before the verb.

[Lawrence49]

surely pronouns ending in a vowel such as mi, ti, lo, la, le, li drop the vowel before a verb beginning with a vowel or h?

[Ariaflame]

It can do, but is not obliged to. And I suspect it mostly happens where the vowel that the pronoun ends with is the same as the one the next one starts with. As several people have already commented duolingo accepts Lui l'ama. I'm fairly sure that Ti amo for example doesn't go to t'amo. Though if a native speaker can correct me that would be fine.
English has many cases where there is an elided version and a full version and both are acceptable. Isn't, wasn't, I'll etc. I suspect Italian is the same.