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- "Quanto è lungo un miglio?"
146 Comments
I accidentally typed 'how long is a mule'. Sigh. It was not correct, if you're wondering.
1195
And still it was the Romans who came up with the mile. When their legions where marching across the empire the counted the times the same foot hit the ground and marked of every time they had made a thousand paces (mille passus = 1 miglio), ~ 1 841 meters. That way the were able to make maps with correct distances between Rome and e.g. 'Parisium' or 'Londonium'.
Locals around the Empire soon adopted this and more or less every village, town and country began to define it's own mile. But Italy was also one of the first countries to abandon this system already in 1861 and today it's the metric system that's used all over Italy.
Italians know their history and e.g. Air Italia calls it frequent flyer program Millemiglia, - so don't go there and tell them the miglo is not important . . . or an English invention.
Every country on earth uses the metric system, no wait the US doesn't.
Although it is mainly the US, I believe some parts of the UK and India still unofficially use a form of the imperial system.
Miles are not metric. However, a kilometer is a metric unit that is equal to 5/8 of a mile.
The mile is an English unit of length of linear measure equal to 5,280 feet, or 1,760 yards, and standardised as exactly 1,609.344 metres by international agreement in 1959.
So technically a mile is a metric measurement :D (
- 323
nope. padantry can't change that; not technically or anyway. because something can be compared to a high degree of accuracy to a metric measure doesn't make it metric. it makes it equivalent.
- 1086
It is not equivalent, it is literally defined using the meter. Not that that makes it metric though.
I believe the modern mille miglia rally is 1000 km long. However, the former mille miglia road race, last run in 1957, was roughly 1000 miles. So the question is, when Italians say 'miglia', do they mean mile or kilometre? The UK went metric from 1965, but the road signs are still in miles and the speedometers on cars are calibrated in miles per hour. The US, which has a lot of influence, still uses imperial measures. It's all muddled up!
- 1195
The Mille Miglia race was established in 1927 in response to the Italian Grand Prix being moved from Brescia to Monza. The Mille Miglia race ran from Brescia to Rome and back in a figure-eight shaped course of roughly 1 000 Roman miles. A Roman mile was 1 000 paces counted when a legion marched from Rome to most other places around Europe.
Statute mile in the UK is different from nautical/air mile in the UK too, and it's still called a mile, so this argument is irrelevant.
The previous comment "miles were invented in Italy" is right, the first mile in history was ancient Roman. The English mile was borrowed from Roman soldiers who conquered Britain, and the Roman mile was later adjusted there to local English lengths like yard, furlong etc. But even the English word itself is borrowed from Latin which was spoken in the Roman Empire at the time.
This sentence's structure is certainly awkward to an English speaker, with "long" coming after the verb: How much is long a mile? Constructs like this make learning Italian challenging, but I am determined :)
I tried to think of it like, "How much is along a mile?" Like asking "how much space is in a mile?" It helps me to understand the actual translation.
I thought "how far is a mile" sounded more natural to me, but it was marked as incorrect.
I wrote "how far is a mile", for the reason no one would see say "long".... I think. Marked wrong!
I agree. Actually it makes no sense, since A MILE is, in itself, a length of measure! Better would be "How many _s are in a mile" !
- 1005
How long is a mile? It's 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards. I don't see why it doesn't make sense :-)
And it kinda doesnt make sense cause in the metric sistem a centimeter has 10 milimeters, a decimeter has 10 centimeters, a meter has 10 decimeters and so on, its waay simpler.
I agree, I live in America and the measurements we use are so hard to memorize.
Or 0.868976 Nautical Miles or 1.609e+12 Nanometers or 1.701096963E-13 Light Years...
- 1005
Or, on Italian, 1,604km or 1.604 m (the use of the decimal comma and dot are inverted in Italian)
The Italian sentence does make sense, since for most people in the World the measure of lenght is meter. Actually mile, foot etc. are quite weird units, because they are extremly hard to count with.
Not so difficult if you grew up in the United States. I have really tried to learn metrics in order to be able to get along away from here, ma...e troppo dificile per me.
- 282
You find it easier to divide a mile into 5,280 ft than to divide a kilometre by 1000 just by moving the decimal point?
- 517
Yep. I fell for it too. I was going to put "un" in as "miglio" ends in "o" which is usually right, but when I checked on the slo-mo, sure I heard "una", changed my mind, away went the heart. Arghhhhh! :/
They do that a lot hear we need to pay more attention to the words that follow. try lessening in regular voice and not in slow mode also remember if the word ends in (A) it is going to be UNA not UN. And again if it ends in (O) its is going to be UN
- 760
I knew it wasn't 'una' because miglio is masculine, but on the slow replay it sounded like 'una' to me, too.
While I find it frustrating at one level that it sound like una, it is a real test to put what I know is right and satisfying when I listen to my growing knowledge and not this error on duolingo.
Absolutely- even though we know it should be un miglio, the slow version sounds like una.
Why couldnt the sentence be, quanto lungo e un miglio? is there some rule that im not aware of?
- 1195
quanto = what quantity / how+much
è = is+it (/he/she/You)
quanto è = how+much is+it
quanto è alto = how+much is+it tall ~ how tall is it
quanto è profondo = how+much is+it deep ~ how deep is it
quanto è lungo = how+much is+it long ~ how long is it
Since 1862, the metric system has been compulsory in Italy. So I guess it might be possible for an Italian to ask how long is a mile, but I would expect they'd want the answer in units they understand.
Indeed. Expanding on my previous answer by plagiarizing from wikipedia, "La parola miglio deriva dall'espressione latina milia passuum, 'migliaia di passi'", where in this case, "passo", or pace in English, is the distance between two falls of the same foot while marching. So, a thousand paces. But since this would vary according to how hard the men were driven, they apparently standardized the measurement as 5 Roman feet in 29BC.
Do Duo want us to type what we hear - or type what we think it should be?
the latter - even if it sounds like "una" you should be able to tell what it's supposed to be. if i said "a ostrich" you should be able to correct it in your head as "an ostrich" - same deal
Hi if your talking about (un or una) in their sentences and you are listening to the voice in slow mode it always sounds like (un) when it should be (una) if it is a feminine word use the (una). Feminine words end in (a) I hope this helps
If you want to see a good example of what I am saying try going back to the very first lesson in Duolingo I really think duolingo does this on purpose.
- 1195
You cannot say it like that in Italian
quanto = what quantity ~ how+much
è = is+it(he/she)
quanto è = how+much is+it
quanto è lungo = how+much is+it long ~ how long is it
quant è profondo = how+much is+it deep ~ how deep is it
- 938
How much is long a mile is the literal English translation. No wonder I am un po' confuso!
We are #MetricForLife here in Australia but the question "How long is a mile?" still comes up occasionally (distances on American websites, for example)
I think you can also say: "quanto lungo è un miglio." Not sure tho, but in Spanish this makes totally sense.
The end of the sentence is spoken so quietly that I can't understand it. And this is valid for many Italian sentences here.
I thought 'quanto' meant how long so why not just 'quanto è un miglio?'
That is not the right word order in Italian. Think of it as "What is [the] length [of] a mile?"
- 417
DL rejects "What is the length of a mile," which I just submitted. I presume the reason is that the prompt does not say "il lungo di un milio" but simply "lungo un milio". DL wants us to distinguish lungo's use as an adjective from its usage as a noun. Fair enough.
The word order confuses me. Is this order correct also: "Quanto lungo (How long) è un miglio (is a mile)?" and if it is, what do these different forms signify?
Why is it not "quanto lungo e un miglio"? The way it reads to me here is "how is long a mile".
- 1195
My two bits
Far is an adverb or an adjective used to talk about distance or amount.
Thee sentence "How far is a mile?" is a question about distance. The answer would be an amount, e.g. "7 500 meters (the old German Reichsmeile) or "About 1 and ½ hours of walk".
Long is an adjective or an adverb used to talk about time, distance or length.
"How long is a mile?" is a question of distance and the answer would be either a length or maybe a distance e.g. "About 1 841 meters (a Roman miglia)" or maybe "It's a 20 minutes walk".
- 1195
Quanto = what quantity ~ how+much
è = is+it (/he/she/You)
lungo = long
un miglio = a mile
How+much is+it long a mile? ~ how long is a mile?
Quanto è profondo? = how+much is+it deep? ~ how deep is it?
- 49
Sorry but the last word was miglio but it was very hard to recognize sounded more like gia dia
A mile is approximated 8/5ths of a kilometer or 1.6 kilometers. For mental calculations, often it is easier to use 8/5.
I might be half deaf but my good eat could not make out the word "miglio" on either the normal or slow versions. And even after I knew what it was, I listened again and it is certainly incomprehensible. I reported it.
This sentence structure doesn't make any sense and I don't see anyone in the comments who explained it. Someone save me!
- 1195
Quanto/a ~ what quantity = how+much
è = is+it (/he/she/You)
Quanto è ? = How+much is+it ?
Quanto è lungo? = how+much is+it long ? ~ how long is it?
Quanto è profondo? = how+much is+it deep ? ~ how deep is it?
Quanto è alto? = how+much is+it tall ? ~how tall is it?
Quanto è pesante? = how+much is+it heavy ? ~ how heavy is it?
Quanto è grande? = how+much is+it big ? ~ how big is it?
Quanti/e = how+many
sono = are+they
Quanti/e sono? = how+many are+they? ~ how many are they?
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- But mind the difference in the following pairs
Quanti sono i bicchieri? = how+many are the glasses?
~ how many are the glasses
Quanti bicchieri ci sono? = how+many glasses there are?
~ how many glasses are there
Quante sono le uova = how+many are the eggs?
~ how many are the eggs?
Quante uova ci sono? = how+many eggs there are?
~ how many eggs are there?
Quanto costa = how+much he/she/it costs? ~ what does it cost?
Surely "How far is a mile" is essentially the same and sounds more natural in English doesn't it?
I went with "How far is a mile?" Trying to make it sound more natural. I got it wrong.
I did the same as that's a better translation in English. I've reported it, 12 May 2014
- 781
Pretty much everyone uses the METRIC system except the US, and the UK which typically has been in an Imperial/Metric limbo for about 40 years IIRC.
What is the length of a mile should surely be correct, even if clumsy and a direct translation
how far is a mile means exactly the same and would be more likely to be used
"How long is a mile?" is a bit like asking "what colour is red" -- the answer is clearly "a mile" or "red"
Not if you've been using kilometers your whole life and suddenly you are given a distance in miles. Many of us who are used to miles find ourselves asking "how long is a kilometer" when distances are given using the metric system.
- 1195
There are many miles with different definitions, e.g. the original Roman mile and the Nautical mile, - but the "International mile" as agreed between anglo speaking countries in 1959, is defined to be exactly 1 609,344 meters.
- 360
What's wrong with how far is a mile? It could be an idiom- otherwise it's like how long is a piece of string????!!!!
