74 Comments
This is one of the most irregular verbs in Italian. Essere = "To be".
Io Sono = i am.
Tu Sei = You are.
Lui È = he/she is.
Noi Siamo = We are.
Voi Siete = Y'all are.
Loro Sono = They Are.
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Small error. Lui means he, not she. Lei means she. Essere is a difficult verb in every language. Thank you!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.muth.android.trainer_demo_it. I use this, it has all the main verbs and conjugations
This is the concept of conjugating verbs. We have it in English, but it is more difficult in Romance languages. The only good example I can think of in English is the verb "to be". I AM, You ARE, He/She/It IS, We ARE, They ARE. In Italian, conjugating the verb depends on the end of the infinitive, and then there are irregulars, and it's too much to explain in one comment. http://www.verbix.com/languages/italian.shtml Try that website. Hope I could help :)
Sono = i am. Siete = Y'all are. Confusing thing is that tu = you and Voi = Y'all or (You all)
Sono is for io and loro from what I know...
Sorry if I have a bad english, I am learning, I'm brazilian...
The difference between "sono" and "siete" is: "Sono" is used for the 1st singular person and 3rd plural person instead of "Siete" which is used for the 2nd plural person. Hope it helped you a little bit :)
Sono is used with they (loro) And siete is used with the plural version of you (voi)
Sono use i am... and they are... but siete use for you are and you all are , siamo use for we are...
Duolingo is trying to express a concept we don't really have in English - a plural second person pronoun. The most common way to express that in English is "You all" but that doesn't get used much, so it sound clunky.
However as we are trying to learn Italian in this unit (not English), I forgive them... The difference between tu (singular) and voi (plural) is an important thing to learn.
Thank you. I have just started taking italian lessons and I find the concept of plural you confusing. Since I seem to be the only one in the class, I was starting to wonder why. Your answer is very helpful in explaining my confusion.
Thanks for explaining! I was wondering why there was this extra word. I just think it must be difficult to learn languages if you're an english speaker!
you all (or y'all) is not the commonest way of expressing the plural you in the English-speaking world. It is important to learn the difference here as it is with the Italian possessive pronouns which are preceded by definite articles, although the latter use has no the my equivalent in English.
Y'all don't know way'all talking about, y'all is every days talk here in the south! :)
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Thee vs You... You is actually y'all in middle English. "You are women" should be accepted.
It just means you where you is more than one person - not necessarily everyone around.
So, yes, it would be tne equivalent of a Souterner's y'all. English does have a plural you - it's you and it conjugatesvthe same as the singular you. In English, you use context to deter mine if the you is singular or plural.
Perhaps you don't understand how we say this in everyday English if English is not your first language. In old English we used to say "Thou" for you and "You" for plural you. We dropped "thou" and made everything "You". So for plural now, depending on what part of the country you're from, you have different ways of saying a plural "you". In the south and in rap songs it's "y'all", short for "you all", which is used mostly in the rest of the U.S. Some say "you's guys, you guys". So in order for Americans to understand this concept, it's easier to replace the Voi conjugation with it's american English equivalent meaning to better associate how to use it.
I definitely agree. Y'all" may be common in the deep south but it is seldom if ever heard in Australia, UK or New Zealand except when talking about a two masted yacht. The words "are" and "women" clearly indicate that "you"is plural. Of course traditonaly "you" was the plural of "thou" and it only relatively recently that "You" has been used for the singular as well as the plural. The translation "You are women" should certainly be accepted.
Um, unless you live in the Deep South of the US--like South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, there they say "you all", or more commonly, y'all. Actually, which I visited Tennessee as a boy, I was leaving a store, when the cashier said Y'all come back. So I went back. We stared at each other. Seems that in Tennesseean, people say that to mean "Y'all come back and see us again, y'hear?" Whoever wrote "you all" from Duolingo was pulling your leg. A Yankee would never say that.
Wait a second now! So Voi is the plural of tu? I thought voi was just a formal way of saying tu. If that's the case, is there a difference between the formal/informal second singular person in Italian?
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"voi" is just the plural of "tu".
Nowadays the only formal personal pronoun is "Lei" as formal "tu" (you singular), for both genders.
Until 100 years ago there were also "Voi" and "Loro" (nowadays never used as formal form).
"Voi" > formal you (1 person)
"Loro" > formal you (2+ people)
I'm not sure about the second singular person bit, but if its any help in italian there are four ways of saying 'you'. 1) "tu" is informal singular, for example your friend or family member. 2) "Lei" with a capital letter is used for people in authority, it's a more polite way of saying 'you' but still in the singular. eg. your boss or teacher 3) "voi" is a plural informal, for example a group of your friends or your whole family 4) "Loro" is a formal plural, eg. when you are talking to two teachers
hope that helps :)
Couldn't it be "you are women" also instead of "you all are women"? It should, as "you" is plural as well. Duolingo counted "you are women" as wrong, but I think that's an error.
"Voi" is formal or plural you, most often the latter; that's because "voi" expresses more intimacy than "lei" as "you", and nowadays at that level people just switch from "lei" to "tu".
I'm feeling annoyed! I was about to put "women" but thought I'd double check the hint since I've just started on Italian. The hint gave three options (first one effectively "domestic help") for donne, it also gave "queen" and another which was not "women". Please could you fix. Thanks!
So I Duolingo had translated "Voi siete donne" as both "You are women" and "You all are women".
Are both translations acceptable? If so, is there a proper time for one over the other?
What am I missing?
Thanks!
never heard before or outside duo, it's ok if also the normal version is accepted
Is there a way to undo a mistake i made? I aciddentlay hit finish when i wasnt finished and i got it wrong!!!! SO MAD!!!!!
Y'all, although used in certain parts of the U.S., is slang and has no place in this forum.
Must be the plural "you." In Spanish there is a different word for each (singular: "tu" or "usted," [informal/formal] plural: "vosotros" or "ustedes")
what's the difference between "tu sei" and "voi siete" if both mean "you are"?
Tu is you singular (one person) and voi is you plural (think y'all -- more than one person.)
The diffrence that in italian another group of people can not be called (tu) they are called (voi) in english (you) means both (tu) and (voi)
put "all" is not the correct translation. .."Voi siete donne"="You are women"; "Voi siete tutti donne"= "You all are women."
i think what they are trying to say is that in english, our way of saying 'you pl' i.e. voi in italian, is 'you all'. dont forget these translations are not all literal word for word translations
I think this 'all' is rubbish. Even in german or french there is no 'hidden' 2nd case plural term such as 'all'. Nor in Spanish. As a question, you would add maybe a this. As a expression I emphasize this as a native German completly strange.
Am I the only one who wishes that Duolingo gave you like a vocab table that got automatically got filled in when you learned new vocab.
