"I miei genitori sono degli avvocati."
Translation:My parents are lawyers.
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Italian here. This has nothing to do with being part of a social class, you're dead wrong!
Here "degli" is not a (articulated) preposition, but a partitive article. You can use partitive articles with any noun, not just with professions. E.g.: passami del latte/del burro/del sale; i nonni ci hanno regalato dei cellulari nuovi a Natale.
Quoting user marziotta, who provided a good explanation further down in this comment section:
"I miei genitori sono gli avvocati" would mean that they are specific lawyers (maybe the only in the room, in the town, or the ones somebody spoke about two minutes before).
You can translate "My parents are lawyers." both as "I miei genitori sono avvocati" and "I miei genitore sono degli avvocati"
(you can consider "degli" as "some", the plural of "un")
Read CivisRomanus explanation about the difference between using/omitting un: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/23014358/My-father-is-a-lawyer
1483
Why is the sentence" we are not mailmen" then not translated as "non siamo delle postini"? Or should that be accepted as well (although it wasn't).
807
I don't think mailmen are a social class in itself. They are, like is said in England, part of the Working Class.
"I miei genitori sono gli avvocati" would mean that they are specific lawyers (maybe the only in the room, in the town, or the ones somebody spoke about two minutes before).
You can translate "My parents are lawyers." both as "I miei genitori sono avvocati" and "I miei genitore sono degli avvocati"
(you can consider "degli" as "some", the plural of "un")
1362
I wrote 'my parents are solicitors', because we don't use the term lawyer much in the UK - it should be accepted
1649
"My parents are solicitors" should be accepted (I reported it) as this is the common way to say this in British English.
Ok now they changed the translation to "my parents are lawyers." I guess I am just going to have to concede that I really don't know the nuances of Italian enough. I guess I want to be right all the time but the language has many twists and turns that are frustrating for the student. It Is part of the process to be wrong !
i have another wonder: earlier in this lesson there was one saying 'lui fa il conduttore' [e.g.] with the explanation that in Italian they use "fare" for describing the job done; 'avvocato' is also a job - how come here is a different rule? [ok, I understand the social stance someone outlined in the comments before; I'd like to understand from the grammatical pov]
1178
From the previous posts I think it is a way of indicating their social status as in they are “of the lawyer profession “ as opposed to sono avvocati which simply describes their qualifications.
543
I've read from tips that dropping the article only happens for singular close family members. We keep it in this example because we speak of both parents.
277
Because the dropping the article rule for family only applies to the singular pronoun. It's also i miei figli etc.
799
why is the word degli necessary ? please help. without it, the sentence would still mean the thing.
277
Italian nouns (almost) always need an article even where English would never use them. (It's us that are being lazy).
543
I'm English and we would be more likely to use the word solicitor. It was incorrect, so I flagged it.
399
The distinction between The Lawyers and Lawyers is not clear in this example so both should be acceptable or tell me how it differs in Italian.