"Io non ho la mucca, ho il cuoio."
Translation:I do not have the cow, I have the leather.
91 Comments
This sentence makes me sad. I will probably still eat beef, but I will be sad about it. Making me think, duolingo, making me think.
How can you tell the different between ho and O as in 'or'? I don't have the cow or the leather...
But can you tell, from the sound, the difference between 'to', 'too', or 'two'? Or, more relevantly, 'oar' from 'or'? It's confusing, but eventually people learn to distinguish from context.
Incidentally, Italians have a really hard time pronouncing 'h', and so typically do so silently: the words 'and' and 'hand' become indistinguishable!
both or and have make sense in the sentence, so you can't tell from context in this case
It depends on the speaker, I'd say. I know people where it is really easy to tell the difference between 'to', 'too' and 'two', but this might also be the result of the years we've known one another. The 'w' sound is absent in both of the first words, after all.
'Or' and 'Oar' should sound different, what with the 'oa' sound being slightly longer and changing, but again, it depends on the speaker.
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That's really interesting to hear. In my fairly standard English accent, there's no difference between "or" and "oar".
My late mother was a stickler for pronunciation of Oar vs. Or, and really got upset if we pronounced lawyer as loyer rather than lawyer. She was from Canada and having children speak properly was mandatory, back in the day. :-)
That makes sense to me. I haven't noticed many heavily aspirated h sounds in Latin based languages. English draws a significant amount of word base from other languages, (including German), I suspect they are the source of the frequent heavily aspirated h's.
i think it is the pause that is meant to tell you, you wouldn't put 'or' after a coma
I would assume in ambiguous cases one would say "io ho" rather than just "ho."
Italian is like Spanish, you don't need use the personal pronoums, in this case you can say "io ho un pollo = I have a chicken" or "ho un pollo" and means the same.
If they wanted to say they had neither, I don't think they would say it like that. It would probably be something closer to 'I neither have the cow nor the leather'. Possibly 'Io non ho la mucca né il cuoio'.
It is difficult to understand, I know. But in Italian pronounciations there are some words that have a 'G' in it but it cannot be heard. The same thing is with the 'H' in 'Ho' and 'Ha'. Hope I helped! :)
In five years I will tell my psychiatrist that my depression stems from this statement. Thanks Duolingo.
Not that I know, it sounds like philosophical. We are in the new era, we don't own animals, but their products...
Yeah, these sentences are starting to make less and less sense. Sometimes I seriously don't know if there is some other meanig that i'm missing, or if the sentence is just supposed to be so... absurd
the author may be a Monty Pyton fan or perhaps a conflicted vegetarian. On the other hand it could be an idiom e.g."I do not have the cow, i have the leather" would be something we could say in Milan at a fashion show. But what about other sentences I've learned like "The knife is in the boot" (I 'll try it in Naples?) or "The tiger eats the butterfly" (something poetic to say while strolling by Circus Maximus).
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I don't mind the lack of sense in duolingo. It just teaches you the construction of the language which is fine
We owned animals and after we skinned the animal we had THE hide; so I thought that would be a correct answer.
I think duolingo is trying to teach us sentence structure while also trying to construct more complex sentences with the words we already know.
Anyone see something sinister in this??? Who put this guy in charge of the cow in the first place?
This could have been said by some of our early ancestors dividing the spoils of a kill or by a very severe restaurant critic?
It may not be an idiom, but it ought to be. Something like "only own the stuff you're actually going to use."
I don't care that moo cow is childish; it makes a great mnemonic for remembering what 'una mucca' is.
"the translation by DL " I've the leather " sounds very unnatural. I would suggest "I have the leather " in this case.
Can this be translated, "I don't have the cow, I have its leather."
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Why is "I haven't the cow" wrong? For duolingo the right version is "I haven't got the cow" but what is the differences between this two versions? I'm Italian native and I hope in your help
Fabio149: In my mind your answer is correct and should be accepted. It does sound slightly more formal or "educated" but I see nothing wrong with it. Where you might hear that construction is in the phrase: "I haven't the slightest idea" which is the same as saying "I haven't got the slightest idea."
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Yes, it's true what you've wrote! But i don't understand why duolinguo don't accept both versions. For me is an error! Correct me if I'm wrong. So, thank you very much for the answer.
Fabio149. The only thing you can do is report it to them and hope they allow for it in the future.
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Mmm, I'm not sure but I think that I found the answer to my question. For duolingo the two possibilities are "I don't have the cow" or "I haven't got the cow" because you can use "I haven't" only when it's followed by a verb (past participle).I think is the right motivation!
Lenny: I think with the article "la" you'd need to include it in English, "cow" is not one of those abstract or geneneric nouns where you'd drop the article in the English: Il tempo/time, Il vino/wine, etc. Here it's quite specific, "I don't have THE cow..."
My translation was, '' I don't have the cow, I have the hide'' which doesn't make sense
chrisye1: It doesn't have to make sense. You're learning/practicing word order, verb conjugation, maybe learning new nouns, etc. Does Dr. Seuss make sense, Ogden Nash? Allen Ginsberg? Dylan? Get over the idea that these sentences have to make sense.
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It does make sense! It's pretty clear what it means literally: the hide: you have it, the cow: you don't. That's all you need to know to use this phrase to learn Italian.
Metaphorically, it seems to me that it's talking about having the finished product, not just the means. The emphasis could be on the lack of means, or the possession of the finished product.
...or, as boldsirrobin says, it could be about only having the stuff you need.
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io non ho la mucca o il cuoio not accepted 23 Apr 2018, and Duo didn't allow me to report it.
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This is one of their most interesting sentences since "I eat your cakes."
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I think its an idiom. Like we might say I don't have a car, I have a pile of scrap metal.
'The hide' should also be correct. The hide, meaning the whole skin of the cow
I misspelled cuoio and was marked wrong, usually if it's close that mark as correct and tell you that you misspelled the word
Could you have some kind of a skip button on the web version and not just the iOS app? People have no mics cannot finish this exercise
Like many such sentences, this one too makes very little if any sense. They're counterproductive not only because they're frustrating, but because even if we hear the words correctly, we doubt they're really saying what we think they are withthe result that we wind up writing something else down and of course are marked incorrect. Contrary to what this one claims, I did have a cow.
From what I have gathered, DL is trying to teach us how to use proper grammar. Remember in your earlier education, how the schools taught grammar in work books and such? They would take these throw-away sentences with words that have some relation but that have little to no use in the real world. I think this is the case here!
