"I am in the restaurant."

Translation: Io sono nel ristorante.

[bonitotto]

what's the difference between "nel ristorante" and " al ristorante"?

[f.formica]

More or less the same as "in the restaurant" and "at the restaurant": you'd use the first to mean you are physically inside a restaurant room, the latter that you are trying to order/eat food at a restaurant.

[hebsartell]

io sono al ristorante, I have heard used as "I am off to the restaurant". then again wouldn't "al" mean "motion" like towards. "vado al ristorante"

[f.formica]

Hm no, unfortunately the Italian prepositions have a wide range of usages, and the same type of prepositional phrase can be introduced by several of them depending on context. For instance the "complemento di moto a luogo" (i.e. the prepositional phrase related to movement toward a place) can be introduced by (quoting https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complemento_di_moto_a_luogo) in, a, da, tra, su, verso, and per; among those only "verso" is strictly related to movement (or rather direction) and properly translates "toward" (I'm used to consider it an adverb rather than a preposition though).

When you use "sono" you aren't referring to any movement, so in Italian it would be "complemento di stato in luogo"; it can't be "I'm off to the restaurant", but it can colloquially be "I'll be at the restaurant".

[mikelmanson]

To "I am in the restaurant" the answer "Sono nel ristorante" is less correct than "Io sono nel ristorante", given the fact that the sentence in English has a defined person. Although "Io sono nel ristorante" is taken has a wrong answer. This is not the first time this error as occored. Correction in future updates should be considered

[BoogieBrow]

Why have I never seen the word 'dentro' before this sentence, but am expected to get it right!? :-|

[JesseItsko]

Why is the state of being verb for first-person singular, "Io sono," the same as that for third person plural, "Loro sono"?

[lauren757qt]

why not nello?

[Rae.F]

Because "nel/nello" follows the same rules as "il/lo" (because they are a contraction of "in+il" and "in+lo"). "Lo" is used before "z" or a consonant cluster that includes "s". "Il" is used before any other consonant. "L'" is used before vowels.