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- Topic: Italian >
- "La mosca è nello zucchero."
84 Comments
There was even a snake in a newspaper yesterday, duo seems like a dangerous place!
I agree with Libellule808 but just to be pedantic I will say that Bilbo's sentence was proper. "well-guarded", not "well", is the adjective being modified by "more".
Some Italian masculine nouns that start with certain letters (like z) or letter combinations (such as sc or st) require "lo" rather than "il". So since "zucchero" is a masculine noun and starts with "z", it needs "lo" before it rather than "il". This in turn affects combinations of prepositions and articles. So here you have "nello" (in + lo = nello) because it is preceding a masculine noun starting with z. In most other cases where you have a masculine noun though, you would indeed use "nel" (in + il).
Looking forward to learning how the any given animal eats the mouse in the watery sugar.
can we actually use la mosca as a "beauty spot" like it says in the hints section? :)
è is impossible to hear in this one. Even on slow speed it just sounds like a hiccup and not an actual word.
Can't confirm this. I can hear it clearly. Maybe you just need some more time getting used to spoken Italian. Italians like to speak very fast.
I guess you're right. But if you think as a native speaker, you don't need to hear the "è" here because you get the sense anyway. But I agree that it doesn't help a beginner.
Is "nel" "nello" without the "the"? I keep getting sentences with either and I haven't spotted a difference. Also, who is downvoting all of these comments haha? They seem so random!
What would the definite article for zucchero be? Find that and then combine it with in (which becomes ne) and you have the correct form.
"Nel" and "nello" BOTH mean "in the". The difference is the letter (or letter combo) the subsequent noun starts with. So if the noun starts with "s", "z", "st" or two or three other letters or letter combos, you have to use "nello", but if it starts with most other consonants, you use "nel". However, gender is also a factor, so if the noun were feminine, then you'd say "nella", regardless of the initial consonant.
There are very similar rules for the definite articles and other combinations of prepositions and definite articles. Have you read any of the Tips and Notes for this course? A lot of this stuff is explained in those. Even if you only do Duolingo on your phone, the Italian course should include Tips and Notes (a lot of languages on the mobile app still don't have Tips and Notes, but the really major ones do, and on the PC version of Duolingo, ALL languages have T & N). I highly recommend a good study of Tips and Notes (which are attached to most Skills). That should clear up a lot for you. But in the meantime, I hope this answer has helped a bit.
Can anyone explain why 'nello' is one word here rather than being written 'nel lo'?
Italians like it to contract prepositions and articles: 'nello', 'nella', 'nel', 'nei', 'alla', 'allo'.'sul','sullo',... Ýou just have to get used to it. BTW, 'nel' is already a contraction of 'in' and 'il'. (EDIT: error corrected, thanks to sfaulk5 for pointing it out)
@sfaulk5: of course you're right! Sorry for that one. I changed my answer accordingly.
Thank you, I had just gotten used to nel, I forgot zucchero takes lo.
Is there a way to type the "e" with the accent? It bugs me that I have to stop midsentence to go up and click it. =)
There actually is, but it takes some preparation and has nothing to do with Duolingo. Also this method assumes you use Windows. I don't know about other systems. So:
First, go to your Start menu and search "character map". Open the program, it's just a little box full of characters. Find the one you want and select it (you have to click it, then click select), then it will appear in the field at the bottom. From there you just copy it, and as long as you have it copied you can just hit Ctrl+V to whack it into the middle of your sentence :D
Of course, you can only do this for one character at a time, so I just use è as it's the most common. I hope this helps, it certainly speeds things up for me :)
Wow, it really makes a difference when you do that! Thanks.
~@AnonymousDecker
127
Just type the e and don't worry about the accent. You'll be reminded that you forgot it, but since you knew of it anyway, you can ignore that and proceed. I find it's just faster for me, but to each his own.
- 277
You can switch your keyboard config language to English (International) and you'll be able to type not just accents áàâ but also umlauts ü and other characters used in European languages.
Why can't the fly be ON the sugar? It makes just as much sense. What if the sugar was in a pile, and the fly landed on it?
That would be 'sullo'. A fly could've dug into the sugar and be in the jar, under several layers of sugar, therefore "nello" zucchero.
Many many years ago, when I was a kid, one could buy sugar cubes that contained a fake plastic fly (for entertainment reasons,I suppose). Hence la mosca era nello zucchero :-)
There is no "lo" before "zucchero" so i wrote just "sugar" and it says its a mistake is it??
It's easy to miss the combined prepositions: they are rather difficult because the original elements can change quite a bit
- 91
I got 'on the sugar' wrong. I've used 'on the plate' nel piatto and it was correct. What am I missing?
Does mosca really mean beauty spot ??? Because sometimes the translation is wrong
Between flies and ants in it, and bees eating it, I shall be steering well clear of sugar if I ever go to Italy!
- 245
First the snake in the boot, then ants in the butter, and now flies are in the sugar!!! Whats going on here?!
Prima "la formica nel burro", ora "la mosca nello zucchero". Ma che schifo! Non sanno trovare frasi meno disgustose?
I'm not usually told by you that I'm wrong if I have only 1 letter that's off as a typo.
