"Non è certamente il mio problema."
Translation:It is certainly not my problem.
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If you wanted to say "It is not certainly my problem" (i.e. It is not certain that it is my problem) how would you say that? Is there any way of doing it just by moving the "certamente"?
It would be: "Non è certo che è il mio problema." (or maybe better to use subjunctive "Non è certo che sià il mio problema")
I don't think that "certamente" = "certainly" (adverb) can be used like that, you need an adjective (certo)
There are a few words that come from Greek, like problema, that have an -a ending but are masculine. You just have to sort of remember them. Others I can remember are dilemma and programma.
Panorama is another one that I came across recently. Hands up all those who hate masculine nouns ending in a? {Shoots own hand up}. Yes, I got caught by this one too.
But also eg il poeta, il musicista, il pianeta, il sofà.
Also many occupations and identifiers ending in -a can be either masculine or feminine: il/la turista, l'artista, il/la dentista, l'atleta, il/la giornalista, il/la collega, il/la pianista
Thank you for this, the first time I came across problema being masculine.
That would be a semantically correct interpretation of the sentence. But pragmatically, most of the time the è has problem as subject. When someone wants to say to say "he is certainly not my probelm", they would surely use Lui explicitely.
That would create the same issue as switching the word order in English: slightly different sentence.
Why not he or she rather than it? Though neither lui nor lei are used, there is nothing that eliminates the possibility that one or the other could be implied. Or is there?
Although there are certain contexts where "He/she is not my problem" might make sense, you really would need those context clues to have that sentence work.