Inheriting and passing on

The thirty-first entry is rinunciare, and what is hard about it is not the meaning but a single letter. English gives up a thing directly: you « renounce » a claim, a title, an inheritance, and the object follows the verb with nothing in between. Italian cannot do that. Rinunciare governs a, always, and whatever is given up arrives only through that preposition — rinunciare all’eredità, rinunciare al legato, rinunciare a un diritto, and on its own ci rinuncio, I give up. The noun keeps the same harness: la rinuncia all’eredità, the thirty-second entry, never la rinuncia dell’eredità — where English switches to « of » the moment the verb becomes a noun. One consequence catches readers out in legal prose. Since the thing given up is not a direct object, rinunciare has no ordinary passive: l’eredità è stata rinunciata is not Italian at all, and a notary writes si è rinunciato all’eredità instead, or reaches for another verb. So the rule to carry away is small and absolute. Put the a in first, and let the inheritance come after it.