"Cosa fai nel pomeriggio?"

Translation: What do you do in the afternoon?

[servertime]

"what are you doing this afternoon"?

[hayley_t]

Cosa fai questo pomeriggio"?

[K2mission]

Reported it 2019-05-28

[JenniferAron]

Is there a grammar rule that can help me know which preposition is correct to use for periods of time such as this? My source of confusion comes from another exercise in which "nella mattina" was incorrect (the correct choices were "I gatti bevono latte ALLA mattina, or ...DI mattina). So in this exercise, why is it "NEL pomeriggio" but in a similar context I cannot use NELLA mattina? In this question, can we also say "AL pomeriggio" or "DI pomeriggio"? Thanks in advance!

[Muttley_]

To be on the safe side, you should use "di" with general statements about time ("Di mattina, di pomeriggio, di venerdì...") and "questo/a" ("questa mattina, questo pomeriggio, questo venerdì...") if you want to specify "this" period of time.

[chillrosalyn]

What drugs do you do in the afternoon?

[Mfrenchy77]

What is the literal translation of pomeriggio?

[Muttley_]

The literal translation is "afternoon".
If you are enquiring about its etymology, well, it's the same as in English: "post-meriggio" with "post" meaning after and "meriggio" being and old form for "mezzogiorno"
http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/meriggio/#

[Diougnes2]

Into a place where thoughts can bloom, into a room where is nine in the afternoon

[ronan.odow]

What are you doing this afternoon? is perfectly acceptable.

[Muttley_]

That would be questo pomeriggio

[eliyahsromans]

no

[Flossie250896]

I get this mixed up with pomodoro so couldn't understand why it would say, "What are you doing in the tomato?" !!

[Elena18]

Is this referring to afternoons in general? If so, "afternoons" should also be accepted. If not, as servertime pointed out, "this afternoon" should be ok. Hopefully, Marziotta (or another native) can enlighten us!

[Muttley_]

"Afternoons" is a possibility, but it is not the first one that comes to my mind. The sentence would sound better with "questo" instead of "nel", but to my ear, it still refers to the very next afternoon, not all afternoons. In facts you have the plural in English, too.

[mangoHero1]

I agree, questo pomeriggio would be better translated as this afternoon

[m1c45]

this afternoon il pomeriggio , at least i think so

[TheFinkie]

How would "what are you doing in the afternoon?" or "what will you do in the afternoon?" be said differently?

[LaMarGibson]

I put "What do you make in the afternoon" and it was marked wrong

[felipsag]

Why not "what do you do at afternoon?" or "what do you do at the afternoon?" Thanks in advance

[vagg16]

why is nel pomeriggio(in the afternoon) accepted but nella sera (in the evening) not accepted when i tried

[RichardShl]

Would it be possible, or maybe even better, to say: "Quale fai nel pomeriggio?" (What do you do in the afternoon?) Thank you for the help!!

[Muttley_]

quale means 'which' so it's really incorrect here.