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- "She drinks water."
"She drinks water."
Translation:Lei beve l'acqua.
38 Comments
l'acqua and acqua aren't two different things? Isn't l'acqua "the water", and acqua is "water"?
(native speaker) Bevi acqua = you drink water (=not wine or beer but water); bevi l'acqua (the water in front of you / the water i'm giving you). Is it ok now?
Is Italian like French in that you have to put le/la/les, un/une/des in front of every noun?
I think that's just an Italian language convention, to put an article in front of some nouns. Like you would say "Capisco l'italiano" but you wouldn't translate it into English as "I understand the Italian." Such as "Io mangio il pane" means both "I eat bread" and "I eat the bread."
In this case, Italian demands the article before "acqua". As a portuguese native speaker it may be easier to me accept this little rules.
Yeah, I kind of agree. But I guess that is how Italian works. It's strange. :D
is one better than the other? l'acqua vs. acqua? ie does one sound more native than the other?
This is driving me insane! here it doesn't say the water in english but yet it says l'acqua. The water. I never know when to put it and I get it wrong randomly just like I get it right randomly. what is going on here!?
It should be Lei Beve l'acqua - it's an italian grammatical rule to have an article before the noon in almost all cases
Always need to have articles before noon. After lunch they're too lazy to care though.
beva is an imperative or subjunctive form...you probably won't get to that for a while on DL but you could look it up if you are curious...I would forget about it for now.
is there an irregularity for "io"? it goes "io bevo acqua" but "lei beve L'aqua", WHY?
One is saying "I (am) drinking water", saying you are drinking something. The other is saying "She is drinking the water", which is stating that "The water" is a specific object;
The correct answers are: Ella beve acqua. and Lei beve l'acqua. Why there should be l' when using Lei, but no artical when using Ella?
in another exercise, i put the definite article before "water" and it was marked incorrect. so i want to know when it is INcorrect to use "l'acqua". thanks!
It has the same meaning of the english case : "I drink water" (Io bevo acqua) indicates a truth,a habit; "I drink THE water" (Io bevo L'acqua) indicates a particular case or action (in this case,I drink THAT particular water).
"Beve" (ie third person singular form) always goes with lei/ Lei, whether it is referring to "she" or formal "you".
I'm confused because I used l'acqua for I drink water and it was wrong saying it was not 'the' water. Then when I omit the l on the above translation, that was wrong. Why is it io sono acqua yet lei beve l'acqua?
Don't worry, Duolingo just makes a lot of mistakes. For real Italian usage, read forsilvia's response above. But usually you will be safe if you add the Italian definite article to the noun, even where "the" is not used in English.
Mangi is "you eat" (informal), mangia is he/she/it eats, or "you eat" (formal).
This link should give you an idea of present tense conjugations:
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/learning-italian/51965-present-indicative-italian/
Mangiare changes according to regular verbs ending in "-are"). Bere changes according to verbs ending in "-ere" (but is irregular so changes "R" to "V"). The link explains how verbs change according to the subject (who or what is doing the action).
beve = he/she/it drinks or "you drink" (formal)
bevo = I drink
bevi = you drink (informal)
See the link in my response to kathykaley.
The difference in the conventions of the nouns article is that the "the" specifies a specific object, not just the object in general.
Yes, if you are talking about English conventions - that doesn't apply to Italian.
