"The girl does not like the juice."
Translation:Alla ragazza non piace il succo.
55 Comments
Piacere means "to be pleasing to", "to be liked by", so the subject is "il succo" and "alla ragazza" is the indirect object.
I am sure you are right here but the logic evades me. Would you be so kind as to explain in very simplistic terms please?
See, the analysis of the given translation is:
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"il succo": subject, juice
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"non piace": verb, is not pleasing
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"alla ragazza": indirect object, to the girl.
The roundabout way of expressing the thought is due to "piacere" being grammatically so different from "like"; if you were to use a different verb it'd be simpler, i.e. "la ragazza non ama il succo" ("amare" is grammatically similar to "love"), but all synonyms of it follow the same rules :)
Brilliant! You have illuminated the hazy darkness that was in front of me with great clarity. Thank you very much indeed.
Ah now I understand. What was confusing me was that I kept thinking of "The girl" as the direct object.
This is a sentence about the juice, not the girl.
Can we translate the given sentence in this way: "The juice doesn't appeal to the girl"?
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Yes, - that is a much closer and better translation. It is the juice, not the girl, who is performing in this sentence.
I guess the best way to think of this is 'to the girl, the milk is not pleasing'
I am seeing this 6 years later after doing the prep section for 3rd time and I get it! Thank you for your patience with us.
If i were to use piacere in the place of a word like amare in your sentence would a native Italian speaker understand it?
English: He likes sandwiches.
Italian: A lui piacciono i panini
Literal English translation: To him, the sandwiches please
All uses of piacere follow this structure
In Italian and in my language, TO LIKE does not require the Nominative Case, but the Dative Case; in other words, it takes an Indirect Object, not a Subject. I know, it's illogical, yours is much clearer, but that's the reality of the language you're studying.
Lo squalo (shark), lo sbaglio (mistake), lo sposo (spouse), lo stadio (stadium), lo scandalo (scandal), and so on. It's called "esse impura" or "esse complicata" in grammar.
alla = to the, the girl meaning alla ragazzi, please duoligo explain better next time
I think it should work but there is a difference between "succo" = juice and "spremuta" = freshly-squeezed fruit juice
"La ragazza non piace il succo" or "Si non piace il succo."
Are these grammatically correct?
No; the first because "piacere" is not transitive, so you need an indirect object like "alla ragazza", the second one because the impersonal "si" stands for the subject, not any object, and it must be placed between non and the verb. It could have been "il succo non si piace" (juice doesn't like itself) or "il succo non piace" (juice isn't liked).
OK, here's my question: in Spanish the construction is similar, except that the indirect object pronoun (le in Spanish) would also need to be included just before the verb. I put that in (la, I think, in Italian) and it was marked wrong. Is it really wrong to do this? Thanks for your expertise!
That's a very interesting question: it would be "a lei le piace", with le being the indirect object clitic equivalent to "a lei", and as such redundant. It's very common in speech, but Italian grammarians have been so opposed to it for so long that people have been taught to avoid it when watching their language. As a grammarian from the Crusca, Nencioni, answers at http://www.accademiadellacrusca.it/it/lingua-italiana/consulenza-linguistica/domande-risposte/forma-corretta, "scandalizza molti come un volgare errore di grammatica" (it offends many as a vulgar grammar mistake), but the grammarians currently only consider it a form of emphasis (pleonasm), similar, but that's my addition, to how one would say "la salute ce l'ho" (the health, I have it [on me]). He then goes on to analyze its usage in Manzoni's work.
To sum up, it should be fine in Italian, but you'll find many people who shudder when hearing "a me mi", "a te ti", "a lui gli", and so on :)
You're the bomb! How interesting that Spanish and Italian, that have so many similarities that I'm often swapping words unawares, should be so different on this subject. As I said, you have to have it in Spanish. Are you a native Italian speaker?
Yes, I'm Italian :) The similarities between Spanish and Italian can be tricky at times, because some words or sentences have acquired different meanings, but overall they're similar enough to be reciprocally understandable.
What is the difference in usage between "non piace" and "dispiace"? The system did not accept the latter ("Alla ragazza dispiace il succo"); is there a way that "dispiace" could work here?
"Dispiacere" could technically be used as a negation of "piacere", but it isn't used that way: it's more used to denote a feeling of unpleasantness, e.g. "mi dispiace" (I'm sorry), "ti dispiace se fumo?" (would you be annoyed or offended if I smoked?). On the other hand "non dispiacere" is sometimes used as a milder form of "piacere": "Ti piace la mia macchina?" "Non mi dispiace" ("Do you like my car?" "I don't dislike it" / It's not bad).
In an earlier lesson I learned that "The boy does not like me." is "Io non gli piaccio.". So for "The girl does not like the juice." I tried "Il succo non le piace.". Why is this wrong? I don't know when to use which order of words ...
"Gli" and "le" are clitic pronouns for "to him" and "to her"; if you have an explicit indirect object (in Italian) you can't use them, although as I wrote above it's sometimes done for emphasis. "The boy does not like me" would be "non piaccio al ragazzo", and so is here "il succo non piace alla ragazza"; "non gli piaccio" is correct for "he doesn't like me", and "il succo non le piace" for "she doesn't like the juice".
Can formica explain why lo does not work? In an earlier lesson, duolingo explained articles before z and s get lo. Why is this different?
It's more complicated than that. TomSFox put together a nice explanation here: http://www.duolingo.com/comment/1055925 (take care that the discriminant is "the following letters", not the following word)
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In the simplest way I can think to describe this, with no linguistic jargon:
"piacere" translates to "to be pleasing to", as there is no direct translation of "to like".
So this sentence is constructed as such:
The juice is not pleasing to the girl.
Which explains why we have "alla ragazza".
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All you have to remember is that and the word order, and the word order is the same as if the verb was normal!
Your explanation of the verb is good. But why doesn't the sentence start with the subject? Why is the subject at the end of the declarative sentence? Is it just the way this verb works? Are others similar?
In principle all Italian sentences can have the subject at the end for emphasis: in this course there are such sentences as "stasera offro io'. It's common with 'piacere' and 'mancare' because the emphasis is often the same as the English verbs 'like' and 'miss'.
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"la ragazza non piace il succo" what's wrong in it why "alla" instead of "la"
I dont get it, I thought it was "la ragazza" not "alla ragazza" why do they have to have the "alla" in it? So confused.
Its very frustrating having to rearrange a sentence by guessing what Duo might mean.
The girl 'la ragazza'
Does not like 'non piace'
The juice 'il succo'
How am i supposed to guess that the juice is really the topic of the sentence?
Why does 'La ragazza non le piace il succo' not work? There must be something I'm not seeing.
Two things:
- Piacere is intransitive so the object cannot be "la ragazza" (direct) it must include a preposition, "alla ragazza" (indirect).
- In Italian repeating the object (alla ragazza / le) can be done for emphasis, but with piacere it's seen as poor language and discouraged, especially due to its association to Neapolitan dialects (probably influenced by Spanish).
