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- "A woman has her own bag."
"A woman has her own bag."
Translation:Una donna ha la propria borsa.
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My Italian partner tells me that Duolingo is actually a bit misleading here with the meaning of "propria".
It does directly translate as "their own" but more accurately means their own in terms of "it was produced by them".
An easy example she gave me was "la mucca ha la propria latte" - The cow has it's own milk. It's not that the cow is in possession of the milk that gives it the ownership, but the fact it made it.
Hope this clears it up and I hope Duolingo doesn't use it in a misleading way too much.
If you were to use "la sua borsa," there is great ambiguity since she could be holding another woman's bag. "Propria" is very clearly her own.
I wrote "una donna ha la sua propria borsa" which got an Oops, that's wrong. Consider the following. 1. In Chapter 35 of the first great Italian novel, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), Manzoni writes "m'ha detto prima, lui, con la sua propria bocca" (= with his own lips). But although Manzoni's novel is still taught in Italian schools, he was writing in the first half of the 19th century; so, maybe the language has changed. So, let's turn to a contemporary authority. 2. In Maiden & Robustelli's "A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian" published in 2000, Ch. 10 Sect. 11: "Proprio may also be preceded by a possessive adjective indicating person and number of the possessor; this is usually the case with first and second person possessor: Volevo il mio proprio letto. 'I wanted my own bed.' Ma avete abbandonato il vostro proprio giardino. 'But you've abandoned your own garden.'" But the sentence we were asked to translate has a 3rd person possessor. So, it would be unusual to include "sua". And you don't want duolingo teaching you Italian which is either out of date or unusual. So, my sentence was wrong.
I put this, "Una donna ha la sua propria borsa". Why did I get this wrong?
I was going to use the female form, "propria" but I checked first in the Vocabulary section and it wasn't listed. Nevermind, I've learnt from my mistake! What is the feminine plural version then, "proprie?"
Find this frustrating--when you give us the English and have us translate to Italian, if I translate La donna as the woman, response says "also a woman" as another correct response. But, if I say that both la and una are correct for this one, I get an error. Grrrrrrr
In the multiple choice exercise "la propria" and "la sua" are both shown as correct answers, I don't think that is correct, because these will be two different sentences both in english and italian: a woman has her bag, and a woman has her own bag; una donna ha la sua borsa, and una donna ha la propria borsa.
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Unless someone convinces me of the opposite, I'm quite positive that "la sua propia borsa" may be correct. Muy mother tongue is spanish and it's common to say "ella tiene su propia bolsa" and also "ella tiene la propia bolsa" which is not incorrect either.
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does it have to be "la" propria, or could it be "una".......if you wanted to say "she has a bag...that is hers" for example?
I think I figured it out why the article is required here, if I translate the sentence as 'a woman has the bag that is her own', in the same way that 'la sua borsa' (her bag) is 'the bag that is hers'. Is this correct?
B. And C are the same ( b. Una donna ha la propria borsa. C. Una donna ha la propria borsa) which one is not correct?
