#prepositioni

[sayitaliano]

A vs IN [prepositions part 2]

PART ONE

Generally speaking, with names of cities, you need to use “A”: Vado a Roma (=I go to Rome; moving towards/to a place); Sono a Roma (=I am in Rome; presence in a palce). When you want to talk about movement as in coming from a city, use the preposition “DA”: Vengo da Roma (=I come from Rome). With the noun “città”, use the preposition “IN”. Sono in città (=I am in the city); Vado in città (=I go to the city). To express movement like coming from the city, use the preposizione articolata “DALLA”: Vengo dalla (da + la) città (=I come from the city). In case you want to add the aggettivo possessivo, you need to add the article as well (generally in Italian the aggettivo possessivo needs the articolo determinativo, except for family members as “mio padre/mia madre/mio zio...”). So basically, you need to use the preposizione articolata again (articolo + preposizione): Sono nella (in=ne + la) mia città (=I am in my city); Vado nella (in=ne + la) mia città (=I go to my city); Vengo dalla (da + la) mia città (=I come from my city). If you need to talk about coming back (=tornare) to your or a general city, the rules are the same: Torno nella (in=ne + la) mia città (=I come back to my city). Torno in città. (=I come back to the city)

-> To be honest, even if you don’t add the aggettivo possessivo, unless you’re in a different place, it’s kinda obvious that you’re moving to a specific city: let’s suppose you’re in the countryside around a city or even close to the city center but not in the city center of this city yet, and you say “Vado in città”: it means you’re going to that city center.

Summing up: when talking about being in a place (stato in luogo complement) and/or moving towards/to a place (moto a luogo complement), use “a + name of a city” OR “in + città”. When talking about coming from a place (moto da luogo complement), use da.

-- To express the MOTO A LUOGO (moving to a place) complement, there are actually 3 ways: 1) IN/NEL/NELLA: vado IN città, vado IN campagna, vado IN montagna (beware of the exception: vado AL mare), vado IN farmacia (vado NELLA farmacia all’angolo: preposizione articolata is used for more specific places) 2) A/AL/ALLA: vado A Roma, vado A casa, vado A casa di Marco, vado A casa della nonna, vado AL bar, vado AL ristorante, vado AL supermercato 3) DA/DAL/DALLA (generally used when a place involves people more directly/you associate place and people there): vado DAL barbiere, vado DALLA nonna, vado DA Luca, vado DAL macellaio

All these situations and exceptions (can be found more approfonditely in part 1 or ofc send an ask) must be learned by heart (or at least, you need to listen and practice a lot of Italian).