"The boy eats the apple."
Translation:Il ragazzo mangia la mela.
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"I'l raggazo" is not Italian, and wouldn't work in any sentence.
The apostrophe is used when the article "LO" becomes "L'" in front of vowels, but "ragazzo" has no vowel at the beginning.
It's a capital 'i' it looks like it's a capital 'L', but it's not. so if you write in lower case it should be il. Perhaps they should write these answers in lower case letters..or use a font serif font which would be more clear ans to which letter is being used. this is the capital i "I" and this is the lower case L "l' they look the same. it's confusing...I've noticed similar replies on many discussion questions and answers.
Their choice in font on this app is overall poor. They should use a serif that distinguishes the difference between I and l clearly
Thanks for your answer, but I'm still confused about the question "the boy eats the apple"
If "la" is feminine and "Il" is masculine...
Il ragazzo = the boy mangia = eats (or eat, it depends on the sentence) La mela = the apple
And the CORRECT ANSWER in this question is "Il ragazzo mangia la mela"
If "La" = feminine It means, "La mela" = the apple (feminine object)
Then,
If "Il" = masculine It means, "Il ragazzo" = the boy (masculine subject)
And, in this question is "THE BOY eats the apple" not "THE GIRL eats the apple"
Masculine subject + masculine object = RELEVANT.
BUT masculine subject + feminine object = IRRELEVANT. (and it makes me kinda CONFUSED)
If "Il ragazzo mangia un mela" and "Il ragazzo mangia una mela"
Un = a, an, someone (masculine)
Una = a, an, someone (feminine)
I understand that "un" is "a / an" not "the" but "un" is masculine.
Why don't "Il ragazzo mangia un mela" ???
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"Il ragazzo" is masculine because "ragazzo ends in an "o" (and he is a boy). It has nothing to do with the grammatical sex of the apple. "La mela" is feminine because "mela" ends in an "a". All nouns are either masculine or feminine in Italian. The grammatical sex of the boy has nothing to do with the grammatical sex of the apple, and vice versa. They are two different nouns. In other words, the grammatical sex of the subject has nothing to do with the grammatical sex of the object, ever.
It is always una mela because "mela" is feminine. It is always un ragazzo because "ragazzo" is masculine. "Un ragazzo mangia una mela." If a girl ate an apple, it would be "Una ragazza mangia una mela. The grammatical sex of the subject is ALWAYS IRRELEVANT to the grammatical sex of the object.
I hope my explanation is clear and I was able to help you. If not, please let me know.
Just starting out with Italian but it looks similar to Spanish so I'll give this a try ...
Most nouns ending in -o are masculine, most nouns ending in -a are feminine. But at least in Spanish there are a lot of exceptions that you just have to memorize.
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https://www.cyberitalian.com/en/html/gra_na.html
• Most(1) nouns ending in -o are masculine singular
• Most(2) nouns ending in -a are feminine singular
.........(1/2) There are some exceptions
(1) ) la radio (fem. sing.), la mano (fem. sing.),...
(2) ) il problema (masc. sing.), il cinema (masc. sing.),...
-
Nouns ending in -i can be:
1) masculine plural (i cani)
2) feminine plural (le navi) -
Nouns ending in -e can be:
1) masculine singular (il cane)
2) feminine singular (la nave)
3) feminine plural (le case)
This rule covers 98% of italian nouns
2% are:
1) nouns ending in -u
2) nouns ending in consonant
3) monosyllabic nouns like "re" (king), "sci" (ski),...
4) nouns ending with an accented vowel like "città", "caffè", "papà",...
They are invariable and can be anything (most are masculine).
in the plural, they only change the article.
1) il menu → i menu
2) lo sport → gli sport
3) il re → i re
4) la città → le città
At the end there are some nouns that don't follow any of these rules but...
THE ARTICLE ALWAYS INDICATES THE CORRECT GENDER & NUMBER
I am having a terrible time understanding the difference in mangia, mangio, and mangi. Could someone please explain?
This is called conjugation. In English we hardly notice it because we say I eat, we eat, etc. but we do say he/she eats. In Italian the present tense of mangiare (to eat) conjugates as follows: Mangio, I eat Mangi, you eat Mangia, he/she/it eats Mangiamo, we eat Mangiate, you (plural) eat Mangiano, they eat Verbs just have to be learnt, either by repetition as here or off by heart.
In general "the apple" = "la mela" and "an apple" = "una mela". Then in some specific cases the articles are not dealt exactly in the same way. It is better to ask and read the comments whenever you find something that doesn't fit this general rule.
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conjugation of the verb "mangiare"
. . . . indicativo presente
io mangio . . . . . . . . I eat
tu mangi . . . . . . . . .you eat
lui/lei mangia . . . he/she eats
noi mangiamo . . . . we eat
voi mangiate . . . . . .you eat (you all eat)
loro mangiano . . . .they eat
first and foremost, we're talking about singular here so that means we should have il.
Second, even fi this was plural we should use I insteand of gli, because gli is the plural for lo (we use lo when we have z+vowel or s+consonant i.e. lo zucchero, lo squalo) and for l', which is something we use before smthing that starts with a vowel i.e. l'ape l'animale
Il ia for male and la is for female. So bread = il pane is male and apple = la mela is female? How can one tell gender of inanimate objects?
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How do I when to use "la" and when to use "il"? Il ragazzo is correct but la ragazzo is wrong? (But also l'uomo is correct?)
"il" for most masculine nouns;
"lo" for masculine nouns starting with: s + a consonant, ps or z;
"la" for feminine nouns ;
"l' " for any nouns starting with a vowel.
Which nouns are masculine and which are féminine? You just have to learn them as you go along although there are ways of giving an informed guess. For instance "ragazzo" ends with an "o" and it means boy so quite logically it is masculine. "ragazza" ends with an "a" and means girl so again logically it is a feminine noun.
How do you pronounce 'gli'? I know that when g and l are together in Italian they're pronounced in a way quite different than in English
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Except for very few words such as: glicine, glicerina, anglicano and few others, the italian sound "GLI" doesn't have an English equivalent.
IMHO it is more useful to listen and try to repeat the "GLI" sound inside the words (coniglio, famiglia, maglietta, paglia, foglia, moglie, sbaglio)
"Una mela" is "an apple", it was asking for "the apple" which is "la mela."
Il ragazzo, singular masculine noun beginning with a consonant. L'uomo, singular masculine noun beginning with a vowel.
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"Why are there two words for the?" Because many languages have nouns that are considered grammatically male or female. "Il" is "the" for grammatically male nouns and "la" is "the" for grammatically female nouns. Ragazzo is masculine, mela is feminine. But, Italian actually has seven words for "the".
I put in il' ragazzo and was marked wrong. How come in this case there is no apostrophy after the L?
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I know that 3rd person singular is "mangia", but Duo gives options (lui/lei) mangi - what am I missing here?!
Lui/lei mangi : this is the subjunctive which you could use for instance here : penso che il ragazzo mangi una mela.
Il ragazzo mangia una mela : this is a statement of fact so you have to use the normal present (indicative).
Wow just learned a ton of stuff I didn't know going through this after checking yinzez comments thank you all
Why is it "il ragazzo mangia la mela" instead of "le mela" ? The = le right?
"le" is the feminine plural form for "the". You could use it in : "le mele" meaning "the apples" .
The various singular forms of "the" have already been given in the above comments.
The present tense of mangiare (to eat) conjugates as follows:
Mangio, I eat
Mangi, you eat
Mangia, he/she/it eats
Mangiamo, we eat
Mangiate, you (plural) eat
Mangiano, they eat
So the boy eats is: il ragazzo mangia (3rd person singular)
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They don't have stories in Italian to earn more xp so that's not why those people got more XP in too short of a time. Ok whatever. I'm not going to try to be in the top spot anymore. I have too many other things to do in quarantine it's supposed to be on stressful, I don't cheat and don't like cheaters . Like a lady here said, play the app don't let the app play you . I have enough to stress about. Grazie!
If "Il" is "the," then why isnt my answer correct? Il raggazo mangia il mela. Why is it wrong?
In the hints there are both mangi and mangia correct but when i wrote mangi it said it is incorrect and it should be only mangia
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The "hints" are really a mini dictionary that show different meanings/definitions/spellings of the same word. All of them are not correct for the sentence/word that we are translating. It used to be that the top word was correct for the sentence being done, but with "improvements"/updates to the courses, this has changed in some of the languages. I don't know about the Italian course, though, because I haven't been working on it for some months, now. Only "mangia" is correct for this sentence since "boy" is 3rd person singular: he, she eats. "Mangi" is 2nd person singular, familiar: you eat. For 2nd person singular, formal you would say "lei mangia/you eat".
I wrote mangio instead of mangia, does in Italian here don't change the verb to feminin or masculin?
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Verbs don't change their endings based upon grammatical sex. They change their endings based upon "person": 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person singular and plural. It is "io mangio/I eat" and "lui, lei mangia/he, she eats".
Can s.o explain me how i cant use "lei ragazzo" in this sentence? I'm not good at Eng so maybe my grammar has confusing and sorry about that.
"lei" means "she"
"Lei" with capital L is used for the formal "you".
"the" for masculine nouns is "il" with following exceptions :
If masculine noun starts with a vowel use : l'
If masculine noun starts with s before a consonant, z, ps, x, (+ a few others) use : lo