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- "He eats the vegetables."
"He eats the vegetables."
Translation:Mangia la verdura.
70 Comments
"He eats the vegetables" Why is it wrong when i check only the answer " Lui mangia la verdura."? the correction checks also " mangia la verdura" isn't this be more imperative form like giving an order to someone instead of the affirmative form of " lui mangia la verdura" i don't get the logic on the correction!!
So, leaving out the lui suggests this is within a conversation and cannot be a stand alone sentence. "What's he doing?" "Eating vegetables" if fine but starting "Eating vegetables" "What type?" would have no context. Am I correct in thinking that if I just came out with"Mangia la Verdura!" people would think me radical vegetarian?
I'm afraid I don't get the logical connection between everything you wrote, but to answer some: yes, it can be a standalone sentence just as much as "he's eating" can in English (in that you must know who "he" refers to), and no, nobody would assume you're vegetarian just because you'd tell someone to eat vegetables, or all mothers would be vegetarian. There are many cases when you must omit the pronoun is conversation, e.g. "Cosa mangia Salvatore?" "Lui mangia la verdura" <- repeating the person is unnatural; and there are cases where you must not, e.g. "Cosa mangiate?" "Mangia la verdura" <- omitting the person when changing it (noi -> lui) is unnatural.
The example of mothers is a good one. However even in this we know exactly who she's advising, and it's not as if she hasn't said it before a thousand times before. Both examples you gave support my badly made point, which is that the subject has already been identified earlier in the conversation. It's the same in English. Thanks for giving me your time.
Look, i've been in italy many(i mean many) times, i know italian language(not completely and i forget some things but still) and i have NEVER HEARD "mangia la verdura" with the meaning of "he/she eats vegetables". It pisses me off. There has to be "LUI/LEI"! It cant be said that way. (Srry for bad english)
583
The personal pronoun is only used for stressing who is doing whatever. If you simply want to express that he or she eats, you simply use mangia without lui/lei.
Italian is what's known as a "Pro-Drop Language", Meaning that pronouns can be dropped before verbs, As the verb carries all the meaning of the pronoun, Basically the only reason you would include the pronoun normally is either to stress who's doing it (E.G. "I know what they eat, But what does He eat?" "So che mangiano, Ma che lui mangia?"), Or perhaps to specify, In the case of the third person singular, Should it not be obvious whether you mean He, She, Or It, Although in many circumstances the context would make it evident.
The reason you got this incorrect is because you used 'lei' which means 'she', rather than 'lui'
573
It's not wrong. That's what I put. Maybe you had another error. BTW, "Mangia la verdura" does mean "he, she, or it" eats the vegetables. The pronouns can be left out in Italian because the conjugated verb lets us know what "person" is meant.
573
Probably because it says "vegetables" and not "legumes". All legumes are vegetables but not all vegetables are legumes. My "Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary", which is too big to put in anyone's pocket, only lists "legumi" as "legumes and pulses" and "vegetable" as "verdura". Google translate, though, does list "legumi" as one of three translations for "vegetable", but with a lower frequency of usage than "verdura" and "ortaggio".
You're mixing English and Italian there. True, there is nothing "collective" about "the vegetable", but there is about "la verdura": for instance the Collins dictionary defines it (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/italian-english/verdura) as "(cookery) vegetables pl".