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- Topic: Italian >
- "The woman cooks the turkey."
"The woman cooks the turkey."
Translation:La donna cucina il tacchino.
34 Comments
Why is (cucina) feminine if the turkey is masculine? Can anybody tell me why?
"Cucina" is not used as a noun here, but as a verb in 3. person singular, translated into "(the woman) cooks". And verbs don't have a gender. (:
Also "cucina" refers to the woman that performs the action of cooking not to the turkey that is (passively) beeing cooked.
Turkeys were introduced from the New World. New words in Italian adopted from elsewhere get to be masculine. [Yeah all kinds of new things were coming from Turkey. The big poultry novelty got called a turkey mistakenly by English speakers.]
It's not completely true that imported words get to be masculine. Often they get the gender of the Italian word they replace. Ex. L'email, la web camera, la band, le news, la brioche, la parure, la deadline, la startup
I've heard of bad films being referred to as "turkeys". . just an americanizm, I think.
That's right. To say someone or something is a "turkey" is light-hearted way of saying that thing or person is not adept.
why is brutto film listed as a translation for turkey. I gave it a shot, and of course it did say it was wrong, but I thought it was curious.
665
As you know, some words have more than one meaning. Usually, the first word listed is the correct answer for the sentence you're working on. Besides being a bird that we eat, a "turkey" is also film that is so bad it doesn't even get one star. I have a book that rates films with stars; five stars being the highest rating. Instead of giving a film one star, though, they give a lousy movie a turkey.
"o" - masculine, singular;
"i" - masculine, plural;
"a" - feminine, singular;
"e" - feminine, plural
I use the above for most nouns and pay attention to those irregular ones, i.e. il studente. And then there are those with "lo".
I find it useful to keep a Google Keep note with a list of such words.
:) KK
I keep getting mixed up here. I thought 'cucina' translated into kitchen. Here it is saying to use is it for the word 'cooks'. I do not know when to use 'cucina' and when not to use it. Can I have a little help?
I think it just depends on the context of the sentence. cucina is a feminine cook, and yes also kitchen. so if someone says "Cucina la tacchino" you'll know that it means "she cooks the turkey"; not "kitchen the turkey". Think of it as "bear with me" and "I have a bear" ...same spelling , different meanings; homophones! Hope this helps!!
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A small correction here: A female cook is a cuoca. "Cucina" is the conjugated verb "to cook" for 3rd person singular - he or she cooks/ lui or lei cucina, and as you said "cucina" is also the word for kitchen.
It had 'cuoche' in the drop down list but said it was wrong and wanted 'cuoce' instead. What is the difference?
From what I understand cuochi and cuoche are the masculine and feminine plural nouns of cuoco, meaning a person who is a cook. The only appropriate translation would be to use the verb cucinare, which conjugates in this sentence to cucina. Perhaps I'm wrong here, but this makes sense to me.
Cuocere is also accepted, and also means "to cook." In this case it is conjugated as cuoce.
Thanks for the added information. Is there a subtle difference in meaning between the two verbs cucinare and cuocere? They both mean to cook, so are they interchangeable?
Good question. I had to look it up, but most sources seem to agree that cucinare means the whole process of cooking, while cuocere only refers to the heating of the food.
So, e.g. "To cook (cucinare) the Turkey, first clean it and stuff it, and then place it in the oven and allow it to cook (cuocere) for 4 hours."
This is all just based on what I've seen on the web, though, so take it with a grain of salt!
Huh. My choice was between cucino and cucina. And, I guess it wanted cucina because it was a woman cooking.
One of the choices was "La donna bolle il tacchino." which is technically correct. :)
"... cooks the turkey" = "... cucina il tacchino"; not boil the turkey
Why change the verb when this is to learn the right conjugation for "cucinare" to use for 2nd person singular?
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would you distinguish between a tom turkey and a hen turkey by changing the gender of the noun? as in "il tacchino" and "la tacchina"?
