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Is Italian mass noun use similar to English? "Fish is shark food" uses "fish" & "shark" English mass noun generalizations.
Calamaro/a ‧ Squid
Calamari/e ‧ Squid or Squids
Squid (plural squids or squid) ‧ en.wiktionary.org/wiki/squid ‧
Squid is eaten ‧ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_as_food ‧
Squid are eaten ‧ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_as_food ‧
Squid are cephalopods ‧ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid
[ A bag of bird feed ‧ Mixed seeds for all the feeding birds. ]
[ The grain is horse feed ‧ The mass quantity of grains feed however many horses ] [ ]
Fish is shark food
Fishes are food for sharks
Il pesce è il cibo degli squali. ‧ Fish is shark food.
Il cibo dello squalo è il pesce. ‧ Fish is the shark's food.
Il cibo dello squalo è il pesce. ‧ The shark's food is fish.
Under "dello" is lists "for", so why can't I say "The food for the shark is the fish?"
A noun followed by the "del" preposition and then another noun implies a contraction. "The food for the shark is the fish" would be "Il cibo per lo squalo è il pesce", not "il cibo dello squalo".
i wrote "the food from the shark is fish", wouldn't it be "il cibo di squalo e il pesce" if it was "the shark's food is fish"?
When "di" is combined with the articles "il, lo, la, gli, i" the results "del, dello, della, degli, dei or delle" can have one of two roles. They can express an indefinite quantity like some (Io mangio delle mele), or ownership like of the (il cane delle ragazze). Source: Duolingo
my comment: No, because, ownership is stated here, as "di+lo = dello" which, means "of the" not "from the" "Il cibo dello squalo è il pesce." - "The food of the shark is the fish." I hope it make sense.
I wrote "the food for the shark is the fish" and it said I was correct.
This app was going great till prepositions. They need a clear lesson. This has more to do with sentence structure than it does word translation! Basically from what i get, food of the aka cibo dello ....translates into a 3rd person possesive not really a preposition. This is just catagorized all wrong. This should have been taught with il mio etc.......
At the beginning of the lesson there is a hint (under 'explain') that explains this. All the information needed to do these lessons is here, as long as one takes the time to read them.
" Some and 's When di is combined with the articles il, lo, la, gli, i the results del, dello, della, degli, dei or delle can have one of two roles. They can express an indefinite quantity like some (Io mangio delle mele), or ownership like of the (il cane delle ragazze). "
I use an android app and I haven't seen that, is it something specific to desktop or ios app?
Yes, the site is way better than the phone as it has far more options. But I guess you´ve already figured that out by now
i wrote "shark food is fish." i mean shark's food is fish makes sense i guess. but when we say are talking about dog food in english we don't say "dog's food is kiblets" we just say "dog food is kiblets"
The algorithm of the program recognizes that "the food of the shark" is the same thing as "the shark's food" , but not all nouns can be used as adjectives to describe the same thing and the program cannot know which will work. For example, "the dog of the boy" is the same as "the boy's dog", but "the boy dog" could be misinterpreted as meaning "the male dog" and would not be used. Try reporting "shark food" as an alternate.
"The food of shark is fish" is considered wrong. Why is the article 'of THE shark' nesseccary?
That's an English thing - you can't say "the food of shark" though I can't tell you technically why
"the shark's food" = "the food of the shark"
"the food of shark" is not English, someone will immediately assume English is not your first language.
Most singular nouns require an article in english, at least in these cases.
Of the shark, of a shark are both doable. Sharks would be fine without the article.
Nouns in English usually have to have articles (the or a/an) before them. The exceptions would be when you are talking about a group of things generally, which is when you would use plural, not singular. E.g. "The food of sharks is fish" "The weakness of men is alcohol".
the translation above is not the one given in the answer---how confusing. the one given in the lesson just doesn't make any sense!!
We really DO need a lesson on sentence structure, huh? If only Duolingo provided that :( Anyway, a noun followed by a preposition and then another noun implies a contraction, making "il cibo dello squalo" into "the shark's food". If you wanted to say "the food for the shark", it would be "il cibo per lo squalo" instead.
What did you see in the lesson? I put "The shark's food is fish." and it was marked correct and no alternate was given to me and here it is at the top of the page. Perhaps there was a different answer and it has been corrected?
I don't understand why do we have to put the article "il" before pesce in this exercise? I wrote : il cibo dello squalo è pesce and it is wrong!!!
The article "il" is used also to indicate a category or species, in which case English would not use the article "the". http://italian.about.com/od/grammar/a/italian-definite-articles.htm
A good rule of thumb is that the article is always used in Italian. I haven't got a clue why, though.
this has probably been discussed on another lesson with this issue, but is there a specific rule for when to use "il/la", in this case before the "pesce"? I figured fish was a general term so it wasn't needed, but I got it wrong.
Hmmm... I am not a native English, but I think that if you use "the fish" it sounds like the food of the shark is a specific fish, and not fish in general.
While in Italian the meaning is "the food of the shark (as a species) is fish (any generic fish)".
"e il" sounds so much like "al", i suppose the context makes the correct one obvious though, so no complaints, just an observation about language learning, gotta pay attention to context, cause many times the audio is hard to pick apart.
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So, dello functions like "de" in Spanish, right? The food of the shark is fish.
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I put "the food for the shark is fish" and it was marked wrong. How is that not the same as "the shark's food is fish", especially since my sentence is a literal, word for word translation?
Ibthink i see the difference between "Il cibo per lo squalo è il pesce" and "the shark's food is the fish"
I wish they would cut you some slack with il and un. Sometimes really hard to hear, and is it that important after all?
It is an awkward sentence and no english speaker would say that. 'Fish is shark's food' would be the best translation though one is tempted to say 'Sharks eat fish' as an even better option. It's a case where the word per word translation feels unnatural.
There is nothing wrong with "The shark's food is fish." The shark could be in an aquarium into which the food must be put.
This is not about finding the best sentence to get your thought across. This is about learning a language (by translating the sentences given to you)
This probably wasn't corrected as a typo because they're too completely different things - "shark's" implies that something belongs to just one shark, but "sharks" implies multiple sharks (but I know you knew that, haha). I've noticed that Duolingo doesn't report typos when it's something else.
Technically speaking, yes. DL usually lets you slide for that so you must have made another error.
I actually wrote "The sharks food is fish". The only error I can see is the missing apostrophe.
