"Oggi offro io la cena."
Translation:Today dinner is on me.
85 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Of course It is I is correct in English, but no longer used in conversation. People say "It's me." Since many people here are foreigners--teaching them to say "It is I" in English is essentially teaching an archaic or at least literary form. Easily avoided by saying I'll pay for dinner today. (FWIW I have an MA in English Lit, native speaker of American English.)
I translated "cena" as "supper". This answer was rejected. One kind of problem with such an arbitrary rejection is that English does not make any strong distinction between the two words. Similarly, Italian in the north uses "cena" for dinner but in the south uses "pranzo". A second kind of problem is that there are famous examples where "cena" is traditionally translated as supper. For example, the religious event known in English as "the Last Supper" in Italian is "l'Ultima Cena".
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Yes, although there are regional differences. In some places, "dinner" is more formal and/or at midday; "supper" is the common evening meal.
1945
I think of "dinner" as something fancy, usually at the evening meal, and often something you go out to a fancy restaurant for. Usually it's "supper" at home though (nothing fancy!) I know this varies by where you live (I'm in Toronto, Canada and I'm sure other people who live here would say something different in any case.)
I too think of dinner as the big meal of the day, at noon or at 6:00, and if dinner is at noon, supper is at 6:00, but if lunch is at noon, dinner is at 6:00. For me. Usually we had a mid-day dinner on weekends, and dinner at 'suppertime' the rest of the time, but we also casually called the late meal supper regardless.
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That's The Difference I'm Most Familiar With, I've Often Times Hear My Grandparents Atleast Saying "Dinner" In Reference To A Large Meal Eaten Around Midday. I'd Say "Dinner" Is The Largest Meal Of The Day, While "Supper" Is The Last, They're Oftentimes, But Not Always, The Same.
I think it can vary by region and maybe by culture. When I was growing up on the east coast, we never ate 'supper' - we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I had always assumed supper was the same as dinner. But then I spent a summer on a family farm in Ohio, where the largest meal of the day was at noon and it was called 'dinner', then there was lighter meal called 'supper' at the end of the day.
I agree the words are interchangeable in the UK. Foreigners should also know that there's a lot confusion and snobbery about the words we English use for meals. Today I think "supper" is the posh word for the evening meal and "lunch" to a slightly lesser degree for the midday meal. The working class word for the evening meal can be either "dinner" or perhaps more often "tea". The English class system tears itself apart about these words, beware!
all very true gordon. I'm a working class by origin northerner (wouldn't like to say what I am these days) - as a kid "dinner" was lunchtime, "tea" as you say evening meal taken pretty early - factories let out relatively early, none of this working late in the office or presenteeism or the Italian habit of eating the evening meal very late (to my Brit stomach). Hence "tea-time". Contrary to the post above, I wouldn't say "supper" and "dinner" were totally interchangeable. When I was a kid supper was an odd extra snack late evening just before going to bed! I remember one northerner on the radio expressing his surprise on being invited to "supper" by some metropolitan types. Half joking he asked if they wanted him to come round in his pajamas!
Thanks Silk Warrior for triggering some memories. I'm an Australian who had a few English grandparents. We used eat with my surviving grandmother on Friday nights, probably around 6.00pm. In those days, we called this meal 'tea'. These days, most Australian would call any evening meal 'dinner'. Later in the evening, my Grandma would make supper, perhaps around 8.30 or 9.00pm, which usually consisted of cups of tea with cake or biscuits (sweet, but sometimes savoury, that is, with cheese and pickled onions!). I know supper means dinner in some USA states thanks to all the US TV shows I watched as a child. No Australian I know uses supper in this way.
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Yes, in the UK, even to this present day there seems to be a class/cultural divide over the label that we attach to our meals. How about this for a different one; my father was working class from the Midlands and he always called his lunchtime sandwiches at work 'snap'. What would the Italian language make of that?
1945
This is all very interesting. As I just posted to a comment above, I think of "supper" as the ordinary thing and "dinner" as the fancy-schmancy one. And for us, tea is just the drink tea (with maybe a snack along with it, at least in my family - and then there are those who don't drink tea at all - imagine that!) I'm sure that this varies a great deal depending on where you live and on social class. I'm Canadian but my family's origins are English and Irish and not posh.
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Huh, Interesting, I Might Use "Tea" To Refer To A Smaller Snack Around 17-18 O' Clock, While "Dinner" Or "Supper" Would Be At 20 Or So, Sometimes Even Later.
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To all the discussion above: the words supper, tea, dinner, et al were very regional until people became more mobile -- and brought their cultures and vocabulary with them. Here in California, for example, you only heard the word 'supper' in books. It was not until I had a new neighbor from Boston who thought supper was the evening meal. The thing to remember is that Duolingo is only a software program. It can't distinguish between regional/cultural preferences. It is based only on whoever wrote the software.
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I hope this might make it easier. In English we also have this same word order: "Says who? "Say I" "Said he" "And so say all of us." "Toiling away up the slope I was." This last, to bring forward the scene and action.
So "Offer I the dinner." in Italian is not so strange. It is we (not 'us'), speakers of English, who have been gradually dropping some things for the sake of debatable 'simplicity' or some teachers probably largely in the US moved things that way -into rigid rules at the expense of language appreciation and other features.
In the end we are embracing and appreciating Italian.
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Zdarec Michale, "SERVE wine" is in italian always "SERVIRE il vino" and "OFFER wine" is always "OFFRIRE il vino", so if you could go back to that frase (I don't know where it could be) and let the duolingo team know their mistake, it would be great for the future users. Diky moc.
A previous example in this same lesson with this verb had it translated as "to serve": Lui offre del vino alle donne: He serves wine to the women. I entered "Today I serve dinner" and it was incorrect. Can someone please explain a. why it is translated as serve and not offer in the first example, and vice versa in this one; and b. how would you say "Today I serve dinner"?
It would be difficult to guess the meaning (I'm paying for dinner today) just from knowing the meanings of the individual words. (I put "Today i give the dinner" thinking it meant I'm cooking dinner for everyone. Maybe duolingo believes we will remember better something like this if we get it wrong the first time, as we are very likely to do, if a particular idiom has not been introduced before we are asked to translate it. I suspect it does make it more memorable.
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I put, "Today I treat for dinner." I am familiar with offro io being a way of offering to pay. For us, "to treat" is a way of offering to pay or to buy.
This threw me off because I couldn't make sense of the grammar. This was presented as multiple choice: "Oggi ---- io la cena." with a choice between "offro" and "offri". I read it as "Today ---- I the dinner." So I guessed that maybe 'io' could sometimes mean 'me', and chose 'offri' to make the sentence mean "Today you offer me the dinner." My answer was rejected.
There was no explanation given for the corrected answer. Nothing in the notes. Is this a common grammatical construct? Is it an idiom? How can I use this? Can I say "Oggi offri tu la cena." to mean "Today dinner is on you."? How about "Oggi offre il restaurante le beverande." for "Today drinks are on the house."?
I wrote "Today I give the dinner", which is correct in English, at least where I come from, and is one of the suggested meanings of "offro" I was marked incorrect, with the correct answer given as "Today I offer the dinner". It is only because I came here to post a comment that I see the preferred translation is "Today dinner is on me".
I too wrote "Today I give the dinner", but with the idea of a more formal occasion than a simple treat, and to me this still seems reasonable.
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Why do they insist on such specific phrases? Have run through every alternative turn of phrase (in English) I could think of. This isn't a course in language, it is a course in Duolingo.
William, my Webster's New World Italian Dictionary defines 'offrire' as 'to offer' and does not list 'to serve' (servire) as an alternate definition. I would agree that these could possibly be synonyms in the correct context. But for this lesson, I see a difference between offering to pay for one's dinner, and serving it.
I answered "today I am buying dinner" as that is the way I would explain it to make clear that I am the one paying (as opposed to "today I am cooking dinner (for you)" and Duolingo marked it wrong. "Dinner is on me" is much more idiomatic English and Duolingo can be very inconsistent about whether it wants more literal translations (which I usually use as it makes me think more about the different ways I could think about it in English, hoping to get myself thinking more like an Italian) or idiomatic ones. :-[
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Dinner is on me, I'll buy you dinner, I'll get your dinner, I'll shout you dinner (Australian!) - all different ways of saying it. But why does Duo not accept the literal translation as well? "Today I offer you dinner" should be accepted.
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I Hadn't Seen This Sentence Before, And Had To Pick Which Word Goes Between "Oggi" And "Io", I Interpreted It As "The Day Offers Me The Dinner" (Doesn't Really Make Sense, Atleast Not With "Dinner", But Duolingo Has Used Nonsensical Sentences In The Past), I'm Quite Annoyed That I Was Marked Wrong With No Possible Way Of Knowing That It's Offro. I'm Guessing The Way I Used It Would Have "Mi" Instead Of "Io", But I'd Never Seen The Verb Before The Pronoun Before, So It Made Just As Much Sense To Me.
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Whereas it is perfectly common, the phrase "[whatever] is on me" is somewhat informal. I tried – in search of an emphasis on "I" – "Today, I pay for dinner", and "Today, it is I who pays for dinner", neither of which was accepted. Whereas, of course, one would normally say something completely different: "You must let me pay for dinner today". The last time I heard the phrase "such-and-such is on me" an eight-year-old cowboy was trying to buy the friendship of some other children by giving away bars of white chocolate.
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Since I had no idea what this Italian sentence meant I put "Today I offer the dinner" and it was accepted! It's not even meaningful English.
3179
Yes, you can say "Oggi offro la cena" and leave out the word "io". The "io" is more for emphasis. You can also reverse "io" in the sentence. Oggi, io offro la cena.