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- "Alla ragazza non piace il po…
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997
I'm not sure where you got that example.
If you find la ragazza piace then the following part must have been a [qualcuno] ('[someone] likes the girl').
Are you sure you're not confusing the construction of piacere (mi piace, ti piace, gli piace...) with the reflexive construction (it is not reflexive)?
Haha, apparently in Italian it's the same as in Spanish. We use "the chicken" for chicken in general (as a food). You can't say "alla ragazza non piace pollo" just as you can't say it in Spanish either ("a la chica no le gusta pollo" sounds like there's something missing, it must say "a la chica no le gusta el pollo"). For a particular chicken we would say: "a la chica no le gusta ese pollo" but I don't know if it's the same in Italian.
The confusing thing for me is that there seems no way to make distinctions that are easy in English - "The girl does not like chicken" meaning, she doesn't like chicken (as a food) in general, vs. "The girl does not like the chicken" meaning she doesn't like that nasty barnyard animal that pecks her, or the specific dish she ordered. Not sure how one makes these distinctions in Italian - any thoughts?
The only way I can remember how the Italians phrase this "piacere" is that : the chicken is (not) pleasing to the girl" (why must have alla for to the )and then The girl does not like il pollo. In English more commonly heard is she does not care for or she dislikes but politely "she would prefer...."
Can an Italian native speaker, or at least an advance student, confirm that you do NOT need an oblique pronoun for "she"? As in:
- Alla ragazza non LE piace il pollo.
Because that's how you say it in Spanish, for example (as well as other languages): "a ella no LE gusta". I just want to make sure the absence of the pronoun is correct in Italian, or at the very least, that it's the way people say it in everyday life.
997
That is actually an error in Italian (unless you are putting emphasis on le).
If you have the noun (ragazza in this case), you don't use the pronoun (le). The function of a 'pronoun' is indeed to take the place of a noun.
This is a difference that troubles Spanish students (and Italian students learning Spanish).
526
All questions that must be spoken are shown as wrong when spoken. Only voice questions show wrong.
997
The verb piacere has a structure that is built the opposite way when compared to 'like'. The subject of 'like' becomes the indirect object (a) of piacere and the object of 'like' becomes the subject of piacere:
'Like'
subject: the thing/person doing the like ('the girl')
like ('doesn't like')
object: the thing that is liked ('chicken')
piacere
subject: the thing that is liked (il pollo)
piacere (conjugated according to the subject) (non piace)
indirect object: the thing/person doing the like (alla ragazza)
Also: in Italian the structure of the sentence is not as rigid as in English so it is common to put the indirect object of piacere at the beginning of the sentence: _alla ragazza non piace il pollo. This should make it easier to understand for an English speaking person as it keeps the same order of 'like', the only difference being the use of the marker for the indirect object.
Unfortunately this is a structure that needs to be learned; there is no way around it.
Saying la ragazza non piace il pollo would make it unclear who is liking what since there is no indirect object specified and, because of the flexibility of piacere, both la ragazza and il pollo would be perceived as subject (the person/thing doing the 'like').