"Your insects are on my plate."
Translation:I tuoi insetti sono nel mio piatto.
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I think if someone's insects were on my plate, I would end the sentence with exclamation points!!!
I'm confused. Why 'nel' and not 'sul'? I would translate 'nel mio piatto' as 'in my plate', and 'sul mio piatto' as 'on my plate'. As an American English speaker, I say things are in dishes (concave containers), but on plates (flat surfaces). On the other hand[*], my Italian dictionary says 'piatto' means 'dish', in which case 'nel mio piatto' would be 'in my dish', which makes more sense to me. Are plates and dishes synonymous in Italian?
[* To be fair, English learners might reasonably ask why we sometimes use 'on' and other times 'in' with respect to hands.]
In English a plate is considered a surface, not a container, so "in the plate" is wrong in English. Plate and dish seem to be references to the same piece of tableware in Italian (certainly my Italian wife and her family all use 'piatto' both for a plate and a dish. And if you think about it in English dish can mean either a slightly concave plate or it can refer to the food itself (as in "dish of the day").
Your answer looks right to me (not that I'm a huge expert), but sometimes I've found that even though I know the right answer, I may make an error when I type it (usually because I'm typing too fast). Some typos will get by, but if it's a typo that's grammatically significant, like leaving off a plural ending, it gets marked wrong. That might be what happened to you.
1468
Have been wondering when to use 'i tuoi' as opposed to 'i vostri'. Is either one right, or is it a case of "i tuoi" for 'your' and "i vostri" for yours? Help please!
If you're a native speaker of English, this will be a little annoying when learning any Romance language (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian). But conversely, it's very annoying for any Romance language speaker to learn the correct prepositions in English. In/on/at seem to have no rules for a Romance speaker. So, to answer your question, there is no "on" in Italian or in any of the other Romance languages. There is basically only "in".
- Portuguese: no prato (in the plate)
- Spanish: en el piato (in the plate)
- Italian: nel piato (in the plate)
- French: dans le plat (in the plate)
You are probably thinking of "sul", but that isn't "on" exactly (it CAN be depending on the sentence, but it also can NOT be). That's "over something" ("I put something over the plate", as in covering it). The problem is precisely that in all Romance languages "in" can be translated as "in", "on" or "at" in English. Which is always a nightmare for Romance speakers. Therefore, "in", "on" or "at" can all be translated as simply "in" in any of the Romance languages, depending on the case. Prepositions, articles and conjunctions are troublesome to learn in any language. Some use, some don't, some will pick something different, betraying all logic sense. In Portuguese, Spanish, French (and, incidentally, English) all say "que" for "that" in the sentence "I think that...". Italian solely decided "di" (of) sounded better.
- Portuguese: penso que não
- Spanish: pienso que no
- French: je pense que no
- Italian: penso DI no
Why did they pick "of"? Unfortunately that's the way languages behave. We have a lot of hard pills to swallow when it comes to prepositions.
This is so stupid and demotivatin! WHY whole sebtence all over again instead of just back for review and correction?!!