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- "Si allena sei giorni la sett…
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"alla settimana" means literally "per week" (http://www.wordreference.com/enit/week). But I think it should be fine for this usage.
But here is even the usege "Otto giorni a settimana" (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Days_a_Week)... Maybe some native speaker can make this more clear?
1284
Hi..
☆ The italian sentence seems almost a dialectal form..?!!
● The definite article. ( il / lo / la.. ), together with the preposition "a" is used with measurements of "weight, time, price", etc ..
☆ " al secondo, al minuto, all’ora, al chilo, al giorno, al mese, alla settimana, al metro."
_ Ti vedo due volte al giorno.( Non, due volte il giorno).
_ Giochiamo a tennis quattro volte al mese. (Non, quattro volte il mese).
_ Si allena sei volte alla settimana. ( Non, sei volte la settimana)
_ I giorni della settimana. ( Non, la settimana.)
We would need an impersonal sentence to translate "one trains six days a week" like "Ci si allena sei giorni a settimana". Since the "si" here is already related to the subject, you have to add "ci" to make the sentence impersonal.
Therefore, "One trains six days a week" is not a valid translation for "Si allena sei giorni a settimana", because "allenarsi" is a reflexive verb, and here the "si" is referred to "Lei" or "Lui".
To train = allenarsi
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But how do you tell which person it's in? It does not look like it is third person, so I tried, 'I train 6 days a week', which of course was marked wrong. I see nothing to indicate that it's he or she as opposed to I or they.
Why not "he practices six days a week," since practices is one of the definitions for this verb?
Me too, marked wrong for using she trains... but where is the gender indicated?
Could someone answer Gordon's question, why is it not 'sei giorni alla settimana'
Because allena is a reflexive verb. I have no idea what a reflexive verb is or why iy matters, so I guess this is yet another one I'll have to memorize as it comes up. I looked it up, but I still don't know what a clitic is.
This isn't a strict definition of reflexive verbs, but: when the verb is applied to the subject (so the action is done to the same object as has already been stated (stated here from the verb form later in the sentence)) a reflexive pronoun is required. (The reason this isn't a strict definition is because this isn't always true, but it's a useful definition and I often prefer useful to strict.)
Here si is the reflexive pronoun. In English, the equivalent is himself/herself/itself etc..
In English, he trains does not leave ambiguous who is being trained. We know it is the he who is getting trained. So in English, it isn't really reflexive. However, whether he is training himself, or whether he is being trained by someone else is ambiguous.
Anyway, adding himself/herself/itself doesn't actually break the English meaning. I think there is a strong case for including it in an alternative answer.
The only reason not to include it as an alternative answer, in my opinion, would be if the Italian Si allena leaves ambiguous who is doing the training. Not being a native speaker of Italian, I am unsure whether that is left ambiguous, so although I might think there is a strong case, I could be wrong. I very much think it's not ambiguous, but I don't know for sure.
Any native speakers want to comment?
Allenare = to train somebody; (you're a trainer, for instance) Allenarsi = to train yourself (myself, himself, herself, itself etc.) (reflexive verb).
I agree (and realise how stupid the question sounds) but from a translation perspective I just want to know if I am on the right track. From a pragmatic perspective it may not even matter as I too can only think of very obscure situations where it would train itself.
Is si a reflexive pronoun that always matches the verb in person, so that it can mean each other (when they're kissing) or himself (when he's training)?
I wrote "She trains for six days a week." The use of the word "for" is normal English usage. "Six days a week" sounds awkward. I was, of course , marked wrong.
This is yet another example of Duolingo introducing something new with absolutely no preparation. I'm getting annoyed by it and will just stop using Duolingo if it carries on. It's stupid to deliberately try to annoy your users.
If one cannot understand some rules, it's a good motivation to open a grammar book and find it out! Duolingo is not a grammar teacher! It is just a vocabulary trainer, it was created to make learning new words easier! And it makes it perfectly, this is the best program I ever saw, moreover, it's absolutely FREE!!! What else are you waiting from it? Maybe, a bootle of whiskey for every new block you've done?;)
Believe it or not, but a year ago I took up Spanish on Duolingo entirely on my own, and later, after some practice with the native speakers, I passed a real Spanish exam and now I study Spanish in the university as one of the main subjects, and it seems pretty easy!
Thank you Duolingo!!!
- 1878
I agree with Gregory. Duolingo's grammatical jargon is frequently different from the Italian textbooks I am using. It's often difficult to find the right reference, especially when it comes to all these crazy clitics(?) and other pronouns and two-letter articles and whatever. My textbooks have pages of them, all with overlapping semantic roles. Duolingo's German is much, much better.
- 1696
Well, except that it's not. Supposedly, Duolingo teaches grammar (the are units devoted entirely to grammar!), and its model of teaching vocabulary is kind of broken (which is probably clear to anyone who used any reasonable spaced repetition system). Assume that there are 16 questions/words/sentences in some lesson, and I remember 8 of them very well, 4 of them not so well, and 4 of them I keep forgetting. Instead of concentrating on the 4 (or maybe 8) troublesome ones, Duolingo insists on me repeating things I know well, sometimes a few times. This is a gross inefficiency, not only because I'm wasting time - also because repeating things on the verge of forgetting and not too early leaves a stronger trace in memory. I'm continuing using it anyway, partly as an experiment, partly because I'm a completionist;) (and I didn't finish the built-in Italian lessons yet), but I have to say that I'm rather disappointed at this design flaw. So I cannot agree that it's the "best vocab trainer" - it's far from that. Its few advantages are the price (there are free SR systems out there, but the time overhead of typing in lots of vocabulary is substantial - OTOH, one might argue that this helps remembering, too, so it can be treated as a part of the learning process) and the gamey feeling (which appeals to game geeks like me).
Well, DL is not ideal, I agree! There are many things need to be improved! But still it's a great project! Learning 4 of 8 words is normal for a normal man (not a genius), so do I, and most part of people, I'm sure:)) About training the words that we've already learned by heart and ignoring those that we haven't, yes that's not so good! But you can keep learning them by writing somewhere (e.g. in your own vocabulary) or smth. like this. No one program will do it better than you! And by the way, there is some general rating of the words we've already learned, it's made up as a list with a grade for each word (just like they do it for each lesson). But I can't see it through the cellphone, only in my laptop! P.S. If you saw any valuable apps/programs for learning italiano or português, it would be very good to know! Of course, if it's not a secret;)
