"The girls drink water."
Translation:Le ragazze bevono l'acqua.
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Essentially almost any verb has to agree with the subject or it wont make sense. It's called subject-verb agreement. So anytime you see io, you know it's singular and because of that subject-verb agreement, the verb has to be singular too. That is why it's io bevo. The same applies to the rest, you just have to memorize which ending goes to which subject.
Here are the agreements as far as I know: For singular it would be o: Io bevo, which means I drink. Now for the many plurals! Tu bevi, you drink, would be i; Lei/Lui beve, would be e, her/him drinks; Loro bevono, they drink, would be ono; Noi beviamo, we drink, would be iamo; Voi bevete, you (all) drink, would be ete.
I would also like to add that if you see any of these endings in the verb, you should automatically assume which one that person is talking about. You don't have to say noi beviamo l'acqua; you can say beviamo l'acqua and mean the same thing.
These are general rules but remember there are always exceptions!
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Lei/lui beve means SHE/HE drinks. "Her drinks" and "him drinks": these sentences are very bad English, grammatically incorrect. Do not use her/him anymore.
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It helps when they give a new verb to click on the option "conjugate" and you can see all forms of the verb for the different subjects
If you are doing this as an app on your phone it doesn't give an explanation as it would on a pc.
Why is l'acqua is an option here (I answered "le regazze bevono acqua" and it is correct as well. In my mind, since the English is "drink water" it should no translate to "l'acqua" at all.
I don't think it is a mistake, I just wish to clarify what's behind that.
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It's optional. Just like in English, you can say to someone "The girls drink water" and "The girls drink the water"
If Duo wants you to translate l'acqua, then obviously you type "the water".
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It seems as though this is an error in the program, rather than an optional way of expressing oneself in Italian.
Italian and English both have a 'definite' article. In English we just have the one word 'the', for all nouns, singular and plural. For Italian, the form of thebdefinite article will depend on the form of the noun it precedes (ie masculine, feminine, neuter/singular, plural).
Italian distinguishes between 'water' (could be any water) and 'the water' (indicating a specific water). All of Duolingo's examples up to this point in the Italian course have translated 'water' as 'acqua' and 'the water' as 'l'acqua'.
Italian and English are different from Latin, which does not have a definite article. A person has to read the definite article into the noun, depending on the context of the sentence. That's definitely NOT how English works, and it seems to me, not to be the way that Italian works either.
I believe that this is an error that needs to be fixed.
Someone got anythinh that thorougly explains this in detail but not so much that it confuses the hell out of me. Most appreciated.
Bevo = I drink Bevi = You drink Beve = He / She drinks Beviamo = We drink Bevete = You (plural) drink Bevano = They drink
You just have to memorise the words! Most verbs have the same endings so they're pretty easy to memorise, however some verbs such as this one have their own format (so it's called an irregular verb) .
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"la" is feminine singular, "le" is feminine plural.
"il" is masculine singular, "i" is masculine plural.
However, when a masculine noun begins with z, s+consonant, ps, or gn the nouns begins with "lo" for it's singular and "gli for its plural form
lo studente to gli studenti,
lo zio to gli zii,
on that same note, with any noun that begins with a vowel, you combine the article and noun from il + noun to l'noun (you also do this for feminine), but with masculine nouns you will use "gli" instead of "i" where with feminine you will use "le".
l'amico to gli amici,
l'euro to gli euro,
l'inverno to gli inverni,
...
l'aranciata to le aranciate,
l'entrata to le entrate (in this instance you can also just use l'entrate),
l'ora to le ore (but not in this case),
l'amica to le amiche (the "ch" preserves the hard "c" sound..because the singular ends with "ca". the hard "g" sound is preserved when a word ends with "ga", to "ghe" as well)
Hope this helps more than it confuses!
If you are willing, you can spend $15 or so on a grammar book (I have Schaum's Italian Grammar) and they do an excellent job explaining these finer details.
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I put "l'ragazze" because that's what it said was correct but it marked it incorrectly. Why?
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It's incorrect because it's suppose to be "le regazze". As far as I know, you only contract when you have like vowels like "l'uva" (the grape), "l'italiana" (the Italian language), "l'architetto" (the architect), dell'acqua (some water)...,etc.
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The girls drink water = Le ragazze bovono l 'acqua The men drinks the water = Gli uomini bevono acqua
why does the men doesn't have l'acqua if its plural?
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Most of the time when you have the articles Il/la/gli/le in front of nouns, it normally denotes a rhythm or cycle. Like for instance, "le ragazze bovono l'acqua" translates to "the girls drink water" or "the girls drink the water" depending upon context. It could mean that those girls drink that particular water every hour on the hour, or everyday at that particular time, or that those girls are drinking that particular kind/type of water
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Why could "gli regazzi..." not work as well. Can someone explain the context
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Hiw to know when to put l'acqua versus acqua - i.e. the men drink water versus the girls drink water.
I'm starting to think it has something to do with vowels at the end of a word before a word that starts with a vowel. I am probably wrong, though.
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As far as I know, if the noun ends in an a you use the la. Example, la donnA, la ragazzA la melA, la torta...,etc. To puralize it, you use an le and an e. Like le donnE, le ragazzE, le melE le torte...,etc. Now there are exceptions like la carne so you will have to memorize these exceptions
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"La" is used for feminine nouns in singular, while "Le" is used for feminine nouns in plural. La ragazza (the girls); Le ragazze (the girls).
Big help, what I thought. Is this the same for masculine too? If so, what is "the" plural masculine?
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I wrote ragazze for girls and it said it was wrong because ragazze is feminine...but that's correct so why is it wrong?
I put "l'ragazze bevono acqua" and it said it was incorrect gender. Why? I thought " l' " could be used to any gender and it is short of "the"
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it's wrong because you only contract il if there as a vowel after it like l'uomo or l'uovo.
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I got confused when they had to correct me on this. Thanks to some other comments
