Welcome to Italian B1, Part 2. In this part of the course, you'll learn how to handle real-life situations with more confidence. We'll cover how to complain politely about a faulty product, compare options when looking for a flat, and use some trickier grammar that will make you sound much more natural. Let's get started.

In Italian, you can combine two pronouns to say who receives something and what they receive, all in one go. The indirect pronoun, which indicates the receiver, always comes first, followed by the direct pronoun for the object. Both are placed right before the verb.

When the indirect pronouns 'mi', 'ti', 'ci', or 'vi' are combined with a direct pronoun like 'lo', 'la', 'li', or 'le', a small sound change happens. The final letter 'I' of the indirect pronoun changes to an 'E'. So, 'mi' plus 'lo' becomes 'me lo'.

Let's start with 'me lo', which means 'it to me' when referring to a masculine object. For example, if you're talking about a book, 'il libro', you could say 'Me lo presti?', which means 'Will you lend it to me?'.

Similarly, 'me la' means 'it to me' when referring to a feminine noun. For instance, if someone is talking about 'la storia', the story, you could hear 'Me la racconta', meaning 'He tells it to me'.