"I giorni d'inverno finiscono presto."
Translation:The days of winter end early.
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Do they mean that winter days (daylight hours) are short? (So, winter days are soon over; or winter days end quickly.)
Or do they mean, in a poetic sort of way, that winter will soon be over. (The days of winter end soon/are soon over - although I'm sure most people would say, "will end soon/ will soon be over".) Would an Italian-speaking person use a present tense to mean future in such a case?
In English we don't say "the winter" when referring to the season itself, it's simply "winter". EDIT: actually, maybe that's not true. "I ski in the winter" is just fine. I'm not sure exactly why, but I speak English natively and "the days of the winter" just sounds wrong to me.
What about 500 days of summer? I know it has double meaning, but this is the only example I can think of. Is it acceptable?
(Native AmE speaker) Yes. In fact "500 days of the summer" sounds weird (at least to an American), unless you're saying something like "10 days of the summer last year were hot" since we're referring to a specific summer.
I think the issue at hand is that in English, we favour the 's style possessive with definite nouns. The instances where we convert it to the of style possessive is when there's a modifier.
Eg:
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"That's the classroom of the teacher." (awkward)
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"That's the classroom of the teacher who gives very low marks." (natural)
It works with seasons as well:
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"The days of the winter were freezing." (awkward)
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"The days of the winter of 1976 were freezing." (natural; could be phrased otherwise, but still still natural).
Because it's not "del inverno" which would be "of the winter". "D'inverno" simply means "of winter"
Surely, 'The winter days end soon.' Otherwise it begs the question:- How can a set period of time end early?
Same question: does "presto" here mean soon or early? By the way, does this sentence mean winter finishes early or the daytime in winter is short?
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No. Here presto acts as an adverb that modifies the verb finire (to finish). As an adverb it means soon, early, quickly, immediately.
Adverbs are invariable, they don't change to suit the verb conjugation.
The adjective form of presto means ready, quick, fast, prompt. As in ready meal, quick tempered, prompt response. An adjective does change ending to suit the gender and number of the word it modifies.
Thanks for that. I wondered about the connection with the musical term "presto", which obviously isn't telling the musicians to play early!
Is the English translation correct? I would have thought it meant "The days of winter are soon ending".
This is not a correct English translation if this is the meaning of the phrase. In English you would say, in the winter the days are shorter or in the winter it gets dark earlier. The winter days end soon is the only English version that makes some sense. The winter days are soon over. It'll get warmer.
Would some Italian native please clarify if the Italian means winter will soon be over or winter days are short? DL’s unnatural English is confusing so it is hard to tell.
There's another sentence like this that uses presto and they translate it using a future tense. Why not here?
The sentence in Italian refers to winter days in general, not a specific winter, such as, say, THE winter of '98.
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I first thought, "(on) winter days, they end early", as in, with work. Would that be a possible translation as well?
Funny enough in the listening exercise I totally failed on recognizing "d'inverno", wrote "diverno" and the answer was accepted. Only when I looked at the comments I learned what it should have been... Is "diverno" even a word?
I completed this all 8 lessons for the first lesson of time and unlocked family and measure, left the app for a bit and now it says I only did 7 and family and measure aren't unlocked?! Doulingo glitched
Is "presta" ever used, ive only picked presto, which had alwayd been correct