"Non sono i tuoi pantaloni."
Translation:They are not your pants.
31 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
'sono' is both first person singular (I am) and third person plural (they are). Io sono un uomo. Loro sono belle (they are beautiful).
Though I suppose, since Italian doesn't have to have a subject pronoun this could technically be:
[loro] non sono i tuoi pantaloni; they aren't your pants. [io] non sono i tuoi panteloni: I am not your pants.... a fairly award situation indeed.
"why are you wiping your wet hands on me?" "I just washed them and could not find a towel"" "I am not your pants"
However, I can't fault the grader for not anticipating that situation.
See here for the whole etymology; it's pretty interesting. In Italian it's supposed to be plural but it's not uncommon to hear people informally referring to pants as the singular "pantalone".
English used to use the singular: in place of trousers, you could say "he wore a grey flannel trouser". We old Wodehousians are familiar with this. I like the fact that 'trouser' has in recent years become a verb in English, as in "he trousered the five pound note". I wonder if you could do that with 'pants'?
937
This is a reasonable argument. In this case we are expected to avoid a grammatically accurate translation because it's not logical, but in other cases we are supposed to throw logic out ans just translate. ("I am a butterfly", "I have a bean", etc.)
159
Why is it sometimes I misspell a word and it is okay and other times i miss by one letter and it is wrong?