Come lo spieghi il tuo ritardo?

English Translation

How do you account for your being late?

This feels odd! The verb really has two objects, “lo” and “il tuo ritardo”. We’ve seen the same thing with “sapere”, where there’s often what seems to be a redundant “lo”. Is this specific to a couple of verbs, or is there a more wide ranging idiom here?

Ciao Vicent, trying to “think Italian” I read this as “How do you explain it, your lateness?” It is somehow more emphatic and less cumbersome than the translation given.

Ciao Floria. And thanks very much, as always. That’s just the sort of angle that suddenly makes the thing intelligible! Nice!!

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