The preposition "da" really confuses me. If I wanted to say "I don't have the opportunity to paractise my italian" can I say: non ho l'occasione da practicare..." OR "...l'occasione a practicare..." OR "..l'occasione per practicare.."

L'occasione DI praticare.

Da means mainly from, figuratively and literally.

Moto DA luogo...that's what it indicates...

Thank you. But what about: "Non cé molto da fare". What does DA mean in this case?

"ho molto da fare" means that you have a lot of things that you MUST do, that cannot wait.

"da" has many different uses in italian, too many to list here. To see most of them look at the Garzanti on line dictionary, I think you need to register but it's free. Type in "da" and then click on the word "da" in the list it brings up and you will see a list and explanation of the various uses of the word. All the explanations are in italian though.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter Lee:
Thank you. But what about: "Non cé molto da fare". What does DA mean in this case?

Shortened for

Non c'è molto DA dover fare!

In this case it means To do

There is not much TO BE done

Peter, I'd chalk it up to irregularity - like an exception to the rule (although there's no real rule here). Just an idiomatic thing for you to learn for special cases. And that normally it does, in fact, mean "from."

or also: by

un libro scritto da Umberto Eco

un film diretto da Bernardo Bertolucci

Yes but what about these examples which are very common:

scarpe da uomo
tazza da caffè as opposed to tazza di caffè
partiamo da buoni amici
da bambino andavo....
da grande facevo...
mi fai male da piangere

just to name a few. A very long way from the meanings of "from" and "by".

Thanks, Paolo. Of course.

Right, Vasco - "da" is obviously used in a number of different ways that don't conform to one or two usage patterns. It's really an interesting case to discuss. Thanks, Peter, for bringing it up.

You don't have to convince anyone that 'da' covers a lot of functions, but
saying that from and by are the most common meanings, makes sense to me for a start.



then you can add
since
as or like

and all the other meanings you can track in common usage. But a bit less common.

Paolo
c'è da dire che da buon italiano trovi sempre una via d'uscita!