Spetta a te la decisione.

English Translation

I’ll leave it up to you.

It does not sound right. I would expect it to be spetta_a_te_la_decisione. Here it sounds spettatale like one word.

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I haven’t checked the audio yet, but I would at least indeed expect the “spetta a” to become “spett’a” in speaking, because of “vocalic apocopation” and “elision” in Italian when a word ends in an unstressed vowel and is followed by (a word beginning with) another vowel (being either the same, or a different one).

Just a quick search turned up the following explaining it a bit:

Where for example you can see that even “Santo Angelo”, which contains two different consecutive vowels, becomes “Sant’Angelo”.

In fact, in spoken Italian (by natives), one of the things I struggle most with, is if several little words/phrases end up sounding like one bigger actual word for instance, because it can all sound like one big jumble at times, without much of an idea where which word ends and the next one starts.

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Sindaco, I just listened again to 1. spetta a te la decisione in the search and 2. in the saved collection of this sentence. They are different to my ear. The collection version separates the words nicely. I would think if they intended to put an “elision” or “vocalic apocopation” they would put the apostrophe in the original sentence. But I am with you here, it could be very challenging when the words are bunched up all together.

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English Translation

I’ll leave it up to you.

I am more bothered by the translation.
Wouldn’t be
“The decision is up to you.”
much better?
In Italian there is no “I” and the decision is the subject.

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Right. Also, “I’ll leave it to you” suggests the speaker does not care one way or another, but the Italian sentences indicates that the decision (and the responsibility that goes with it) is with you. I would use this sentence if I feel that i explained a situation, maybe I gave an opinion, but it is not my decision to take.

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