"The chicken is on the plate."
Translation:Il pollo è nel piatto.
38 Comments
Why is Il pollo è nel piatto correct? The chicken is in the plate? Can nel be used interchangeably with sul? This really confuses my simple mind.
In italian they say something is "In the plate" in the same way that we would say something is "On the plate". But nel does not necessarily mean on.
Sullo is only used before masculine nouns beginning with 's + consonante' or the letter 'z.' Hope this helps!
You would have to put "sul", because the definite article for plate is il and not lo, hence sullo."Sul piatto" is accepted, however.
just curious, of "sul" or "nel", which is more likely to be used in normal conversation?
Speaking of a plate, I'd say in (nel, nei); su isn't wrong of course, but I'd mostly use it for trays rather than plates.
Sull' is the truncation of sullo, or su+lo, but it's "il piatto", not "lo piatto", so it should be "sul piatto".
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It told me to say "il pollo sta sul piatto." But I realized the reason I was counted wrong was I used "est" instead of "è". Dumb mistake, but I understand now.
The difference is whether you are talking about composition or location. "Sul" refers to the location of something: the chicken is (located) on/upon the plate. "Nel" refers to both a location and a composition. If you were to use it in this context above, the significance would render a meaning like: chicken is (used) in this plate/dish/meal/food. It might be the reply to the question: which dishes have chicken in them? The chicken is nel (this) dish.
it's tricky, there is no chicken in the sentence: 'il piatto sta sul piatto' = the plate is on the plate :)
In English I'm pretty sure we use "chicken" as meaning "chicken meat" rather than "one chicken"; in Italian would you ever use "i polli" for a sentence like this? (I noticed that it is okay to say "le caramelle" for "candy" even though it technically directly translates as "the candies" [I think].)
I polli would be plural and mean two or more chicken (alive or cooked). "il pollo" can be used both to mean "the chicken" and "chicken meat".
Sorry, but ALL of my translations showed.... nel... None showed sul as shown in the answer at top of this page???? Anybody else see "nel" on their choices? I do know that to use -nel- means the chicken is IN the plate. -sul- means ON the plate. Wonder what happened with the switch?
Because there are two forms of 'in the' that are used for the masculine singular. 'nel' and 'nello'. The latter is only used when the word following it begins with s+consonant, z, and maybe a couple of other rare things that I can't remember off the top of my head. Since 'piatto' doesn't fall under this it's 'nel piatto'
OK, possibly three nell' if the following word begins with a vowel sound (late edit)
On the previous multiple choice, "il cibo è NEL piatto" was the wrong answer. And i have just had a sentence that said "Il pollo è SUL piatto". This is confusing because when to use "sul" and "nel"?
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Discussing idioms like "nel piatto" instead of "sul piatto" and how different languages treat the basic concept behind them, especially when different, is educational and interesting.
Discussing why idioms don't make sense in translation is interesting sometimes, but often not, and definitely not educational. Idioms may come from the same root as "idiots" - no amount of talking is going to change them, and they often are not logical.
The phrase:The chick is ON the plate The answer: The chicken is IN the plate. Shouldn't the answer be: SUL piatto versus NEL piatto
‘On the plate’ feels as if it should be ‘sul’. Why ‘in the plate’? One of the oddities of translation in languages I guess’
Yup, which is the reason Italians get prepositions wrong when they speak English. Either way is equally logical.
E.g. we use "on" for plate and "in" for bowl. In both cases the food is both "in" the center of the item but "on" the surface of the item.
When we say something is "in" a bowl, we don't mean that it is somewhere inside the porceline making up the bowl, but just within the space in the middle of its structure. The thing that's "in" the bowl is still external to the bowl. Now try imagine extending that idea to the plate. There is probably also another language that would go the opposite way and say "on" the bowl.
Something that bothers me about Duolingo is that it doesn't teach you which words are masculine, feminine or neutral, and which words are changed by the gender and how. We're forced to learn it by ourselves, which is sometimes impossible. What I could never tell is what word is changed by what. I thought that the verb is conjugated based on the gender of the subject, but that was disproved when I saw mangia go with a masculine word. Can someone explain to me how this all works? I'm needlessly lost.
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ejh, you seem really lost. did you sleep through the previous 10 or so lessons? mangia is a verb. verbs change by the person (i, you, she, ... -> io mangio, tu mangi, lei mangia, ...), and not by the gender (and it is like this in other languages too). the gender thing is for nouns, when they get prepositions and adjectives and these kind of things. e.g. la ragazza, il ragazzo, la camicia grigia, la gonna rosa, il pinguino azzurro, ... maybe it is an old comment and you already found out, hopefully, just don't want this to confuse someone else too. and actually it teaches the gender by putting there la/il/... before the nouns quite often
Why wouldn’t it be: Il pollo STA nel piatto? In Spanish we would say “el pollo está en el plato”
Yup, Italian is not Spanish. Several Southern dialects tend to overuse stare (unsurprisingly given the long Spanish domination) but in standard Italian when it comes to location stare expresses permanent or usual ones.
thanks. discussion so not helpful. but your language your preposition. own it. sul tavolo nel piatto
In the comments here it says it's e nel, but I'm my answers it says e Sul is correct. I don't even have nul as an option...
