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- "Tu non sai se il cuoco ha il…
"Tu non sai se il cuoco ha il pesce."
Translation:You do not know if the cook has the fish.
52 Comments
This seems antagonistic/ passive agressive, like there is about to be some "fottuto stronzo" and "coglione" passed around. For the kids in il ristorante di Italiano, i suggest duolingo changes this to a question.
Shouldn't the second verb be in subjunctive? I'm just guessing based off how French works, but "you don't know if" to me is an uncertainty clause which would trigger the subjunctive.
231
Are you sure? I've never seen 'savoir' used with the subjunctive in French before. 'Tu ne sais pas si le chef a le poisson.' is how I would say it in French. In fact I am sure 'savoir' doesn't ever take the subjunctive at all.
Yes, I think it should be subjunctive because sapere is negated: "Tu non sai se il cuoco abbia il pesce" but "Tu sai che il cuoco ha il pesce."
I need one too! Have you found one? All the ones I have found so far do not have translations. You may not need one now!
Because "se" means "if". "Si" is a reflexive word that doesn't fit with the sentence.
Apologies for the delay in replying - and thank you for your reply. I suspect I was thinking of the French 'si', that's about the only sensible guess I can make at this stage.
I know what you mean. With me, it's Spanish. I took it for long enough that the Spanish pops into my head first. And Duolingo has no sense of humor when I do things like type "que" instead of "che"!
- 231
That's interesting.. it could be an extremely specific case... but in general, 'if' should be the default answer.
You do not know if the cook has the fish, you simply must assume, 007. Now go in there, grab the fish, save the girl and beat the villain to save the day!
- 1181
"Se" is followed by the subjunctive when you express a hypothetical. This isn't a hypothetical, it's a statement about your knowledge as to whether or not the cook has fish.
you don't know if the cook has a fish is correct and should be accepted - it means the same as "you do not know..."
- 1181
I would guess that your answer was marked wrong because you said "a fish" when it is il pesce.
The word "cook" was not offered in my choices and therefore had to leave it out and was marked wrong. I reported it - hopefully DL fixes it.
I thought the know is Conoscere in Italian, so how does this "sai" fit in?
- 1181
"Conoscere" means "to know" in the sense of being familiar with something and is often used with people. Conosci Mario (you know Mario / you're familiar with Mario).
"Sapere" means "to know" in the sense of knowing how to do something or knowing information/facts. In this case, we're talking about a piece of information (whether or not the cook has the fish), so we use sapere. Non sai se il cuoco ha il pesce (you don't know if the cook has the fish / you don't know the information about whether or not the cook has the fish).
I typed "don't know" instead of "do not know" and so now it says my translation is wrong :(
- 1181
Duolingo is programmed to automatically accept most contractions, including "don't" for "do not", so if it was marked wrong, you've either encountered a bug (https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204728264-How-do-I-report-a-bug-), or you made another mistake in your answer that got it marked wrong.
- 376
"You do not know whether the cook has the fish." did not work for me :( I actually prefer not to use if in place of whether in English.
