"I do not have anything in my pocket."
Translation:Non ho niente in tasca.
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AFAIK, it's a special thing that happens with "pocket". It might be the case with a few other words, too. However, with the word "pocket," the "my" is often dropped. The explanation by an Italian speaker somewhere else on this site was that with the word "pocket," it's just kind of assumed that a person is talking about their own pocket unless otherwise specified.
It is the same with pocket as it is with common familiar places, such as rooms of a house (cucina, bagno, etc) and even (as someone else said earlier) a cellar or swimming pool. The word "the" is left out, because in such familiar places, it is implied.
In cucina = in the kitchen. In bagno = in the bathroom. In tasca = in the pocket.
If you are talking about yourself, such as "non ho niente in tasca" it is implied that you are speaking about your own pocket, and you could translate to "I do not have anything in my pocket".
I believe the same goes if you are talking about someone else. For example, if I was telling someone "Non hai un serpente nello stivale, Woody." It could easily be understood as "You do not have a snake in your boot, Woody."
Hi, just wanted to specify that your example should be "Non hai un serpente nello stivale, Woody", because stivale is the correct singular form and the determinative article "lo" (in "nello") is required here, since I am talking about your boot specifically. You explained very well though. Hope that helps :)
Thank you! I just started going back through all the old posts I'm "following" and looking back, I can't believe I missed those lol. It's great proof of how much I've learned since then, though! I appreciate your correction and I've edited it. ^_^
And yet, Non ho niente nella mia borsa. was an acceptable answer to ' I do not have anything in my bag'. These contradictions are confusing to the learner, leaving them guessing. And that is not good.
Same happens in Russian. And by the way, I just had an example with "borsa" where the possessive was there in full. It seems, dropping it is optional, which makes sense.
Fine, but la mia tasca is defintely not wrong. Or dies it need to be because the exercise was marked 'hard'
Did you put 'la mia' (which is correct) or only 'mia' (which is incorrect).
If you said "nella la mia" then that's why it marked you wrong. "Nella" already includes "la". You said "the" twice.
I used "nella mia tasca" and it was marked wrong. Is it actually incorrect to use mia, even if it not needed in this case due to it being implicit?
Except for close relatives in singular (mia sorella) you normally have to use the definite article with possessives in front of the noun: 'Ho trovato la mia chiave' and not 'Ho travato mia chiave'. The latter is ungrammatical.
I put 'Ho niente...' instead of 'Non ho niente' and it marked it as incorrect. Is the latter not a double negative? As in, 'I don't have nothing'?
It's called negative concord. Many languages have it, including English until relatively recently.
sometimes you can drop the definite article. this is one such case. another such example is "in cucina" and other types of rooms
The previous explanation in the lesson said that we use nella when talking about possessions!??!
Italian does not use explicit possessive constructions as often as English does, and it does not use articles the same way English does. Also, in this case it would not simply be "nella tasca" but "nella mia tasca".
Think of how we say "I hit myself on the head in English, rather than the usually expected "my head". It's similar in Italian, only it's much more widespread.
Almost got me, Tasche is a german word, pronounced like Tasca meaning the same thing.
It doesn't. It means "nothing". But Italian has negative concord, which is similar in principle to adjectives agreeing with nouns. English used to have negative concord, but somewhere along the line it got stigmatized as a "double negative." (Pro tip: language is not math.) So when we translate the whole sentence into English, we don't just word-swap (because that's not how it works). We translate it as how we would say it in English, which is "I don't have anything in my purse."
So "I have nothing in my pocket" becomes "ho niente in tasca" or am i missing something?
No. In English, "I have nothing in my pocket" is just another way to say "I do not have anything in my pocket". The two sentences are synonymous.
In Italian, they say "Non ho niente in tasca". It's called negative concord and it's mandatory in many languages. It is comparable to adjective-noun agreement.
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Tasca is 'pocket, while tasche is 'pockets' (le tasche - plural).
Borsa is bag, as in a purse or shopping bag. Backpack is zaino and suitcase is valigia.