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Clitic Pronouns
Dear DuoLingo,
I just somehow managed to get through the clinic pronouns section. I only received 2 ligots for this achievement. Please send me the additional 198 lingots one deserves for completing this next to impossible topic.
Also, I still don't understand most of it.
61 Comments
Best explanation I found:
Let’s take the example sentence Mario gives an apple to Lucia. This sentence has a subject, Mario, a verb, gives, a direct object, an apple, and an indirect object, Lucia. In a typical sentence, like the previous one, the subject comes before the verb, the direct object comes after the verb and the indirect object, if present, is introduced by a preposition such as to or for. Alternatively, in English, the indirect object can sometimes be placed before the direct object, in which case the preposition is not needed (Mario gives Lucia an apple).
Any of the nouns in this sentence can be replaced by a pronoun. We can replace the subject with a subject pronoun (He gives an apple to Lucia). We can replace either the direct object or indirect object with an object pronoun (Mario gives it to Lucia or Mario gives an apple to her).
In Italian the situation is similar but not identical. This time we’ll start with the Italian version of the previous example sentence: Mario dà una mela a Lucia. If we don’t want an explicit subject then we can just leave out the subject altogether - we don’t need to replace it with a pronoun (Dà una mela a Lucia, He gives an apple to Lucia). This works because the verb itself (dà) already includes the notion of he or she.
Now when it comes to the direct object and indirect object, Italian actually has two different sets of clitic pronouns to choose from. We can replace the direct object with a direct object clitic pronoun (Mario la dà a Lucia, Mario gives it to Lucia). Or we can replace the indirect object with an indirect object clitic pronoun, in which case we don’t need a preposition (Mario le dà una mela, Mario gives an apple to her or Mario gives her an apple).
This is a great explanation. Thanks Raphael. But if we wanted to say "He gives it to her" (using a pronoun, direct pronoun AND indirect pronoun), what would be the correct construction of the sentence? Now i know the "Lui" isn't, necessarily needed, but I'm more interested in how we combine a direct and indirect pronoun.
Thanks in advance.
You put the indirect first, and then the direct. In this sentence, "to her" and then "it". Third person pronouns combine to make a new pronoun when this happens:
"lui le la dà." -> "lui gliela dà"
Have a look at the chart under "double object pronouns"
Here's a linguistically-oriented paper on the subject for your perusal/study/weeping over: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.54.181&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Working my way through the clitics section now, I'm surprised at the number of people who think this section is impossible. I can only imagine you are using Duolingo as your only source of language learning which is a bad idea, get a grammer book and this section will be a lot more straight forward...
Don't feel bad. I didn't understand them much myself when I was fresh out of clitics, myself. In fact some parts I still have trouble with (like the ambiguous "si" for example). It's a rough first impression, but as you progress through the tree you'll notice it sorta clicks. Knowing when "ci" means "us" and when it means "there" will become effortless. One of the big differentiators is their location in a sentence. Italian sentence structure is very deliberate and not quite as malleable as English. Certain things go in certain places for specific reasons and if you jumble them around then words can literally become entirely different words.
The best thing you can do is read several articles and books on Italian pronouns... and after you do that read them all about 20 more times. Eventually you'll get an aha moment and the struggle will seem kind of trivial... especially compared to some of the later lessons.
Italian verbs. Lots and lots of Italian verbs. Truthfully that comment was partially in a bit of jest, mostly because thinking in Italian requires a shift in the way you think, at least with how verbs work. Italian has verbs that are much more context specific than English, so it's a strange shift in thinking.
The only thing I think I"d say that's truly frustrating is that because literal translations don't always work there can be oceans of possible solutions to some phrases, and it's just not possible for Duo to account for all of them. You never get used to being on the last question with no hearts and getting the whole lesson wrong because you chose a preposition Duo doesn't recognize in the context. That... never goes away.
But honestly. I think that Italian is actually more efficient and (because its rules are so consistent) easier than English. The hardest part is just training your brain to stop looking for English patterns where they can't be found.
It seems to me to be largely a matter of different word order. Pronouns often keep older features from language, so English ones still have case and gender (he/she/him/her). Italian pronouns seem to keep Latin word order too, with the object of the verb coming before the verb (sometimes). It's still tough to adapt to, though...
Carbis - your comment made me laugh for a long time. Perfectly summed up my feelings.
I also do not understand... however This helps:
http://www.math.washington.edu/~mitchell/Misc/Italian/Grammar/pro.pdf
"2.1.1 Object and reflexive pronouns In the first and second persons, the clitic object pronouns are the same in the indirect object, direct object, and reflexive cases: mi, ti, ci, vi. In the third person things get more complicated: the direct object pronouns are lo/la/li/le (in the order masculine/femine singular, masculine/femine plural), the indirect object pronouns are gli/le/gli/gli, and the reflexive is always si.
Two bizarre and confusing facts to watch out for: (1) le is both the indirect feminine third person singular clitic, and the direct feminine third person plural clitic; and (2) four of the third person clitics|lo/la/gli/le|are also denite articles.
I'd like to see what someone more experienced than I has to say about "ce ne sono," but to me something seems a bit amiss about it. Is that a quote taken from Duo? Because I don't readily recall seeing it before and I would personally say "ci ne sono" if I were trying to say "there are some of them."
In the case of "ce lo beviamo noi" demonstrates how Italians use reflexive pronouns, which is what "ce" often works as. In English the reflexive direct/indirect objects are frequently understood and left out. English would just say "we drink it," but Italians use reflexives way more. A more excessively literal translation would be "To us, of it, we drink, ourselves." It's wretched in English, but it works in Italian.
I am no expert, but I believe this is a rule of using double-pronouns, e.g. 'ci' becomes 'ce' when used along with another pronoun. More here: http://italian.about.com/library/fare/blfare168a.htm
I am new to Italian and was reading about someone who just finished their tree and was wondering what "clitics" were. I have a lot of Spanish experience (although my duolingo level would suggest otherwise) and was wondering if it's the same as the direct, indirect, and reflexive pronouns in Spanish. Grazie.
Think of piacere as 'pleasing to', rather than 'likes'. So instead of 'he likes it', Italians would say 'it is pleasing to him'. Object and subject are swapped.
So, Gli piace la birra is 'The beer is pleasing to him', and since 'him' here is an indirect pronoun, gli is used. Similarly for Le piace la frutta, think of it as 'The fruit is pleasing to her'.
In both cases, piace is used since it refers to either the beer or the fruit.
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the most difficult thing I've met so far! Wonderful, clear explanation from Raphaelc1 - grazie mille
I found the clitic section fairly easy to complete, Im not boasting in any way though. Without wishing to offend anyone, I found some of the explanations more difficult to understand than the subject itself. For example third person singular pronoun direct subject interjection subjunctive ... only serves to baffle me further as I do not really understand grammar that well. My concern is that maybe my understanding is too simple, based on all of the above. Do clitics simply mean " to you" " to me" " to us" etc etc or something way more complicated ?