"Beviamo acqua."
Translation:We drink water.
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he considered wrong when I answered "Beviamo l'acqua" EDIT: I guess "Biaviamo l'acqua" would mean "we drink THE water", while he asked for "we drink water", isn't it?
They marked it wrong the last time when I put acqua. They need some explanation. Very annoying.
In English, I would only say "We drink the water" if there was some specific water source in question. (e.g. "There is a glass of water on the table. What do you do?")
Is that the same in Italian?
Not quite. It's rather like in French: you prefix it with a definite article ("the") when you're talking about the abstract, the entirety or generality of something. E.g. to say "Cats are ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤" (as in all cats in general), you say "I gatti sono stronzi".
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but duo accepts both the water and water for l'acqua. Also, the water sounds weird to me.
It does sound strange in English, because English doesn't prefix general/abstract concepts with "the". But even in English you can say "I drink the water", e.g. as a reply to a question like: "There is a glass of water on the table. What do you do?", because now "the" refers to that particular water.
Ive been taught that "I drink the water" is equivalent to that I, as a person, drink water. Same as I would say "Mangio il formaggio" if I came over to your house, and you wondered if I could have cheese. Ommiting the definite article gives a different emphasize. If I meet you at a bar, and you already had ordered a beverage, I could ask you "Cosa bevi?" And you would answer me: "Bevo aqua".
It accepts it. Duolingo also accepted "Drink the water" (imperative in english) for "Bevete l'acqua"
What I am finding is that listening to the fine points is very important. She does not say " l'acqua" only "acqua". Important difference.
This approach might fail you for some courses here: when there are audio glitches and moments of silence in the sound samples. I had this problem in the Indonesian course.
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In Italian is not necessary to write the subject pronouns because the verb has a particular form with each one (that fact does not happen in English). For example the verb ''parlare'' (to speak). Its conjugation in the present simple tense is as follows: Io parlo (I speak), Tu parli (you speak), Lui / Lei parla (he / she speaks), Noi parliamo (we speak), Voi parlate (you all speak), Loro parlano (they speak). As you can see if I write ''Parlo con la mia mamma'' (I speak with my mom), it involves the Italian subject pronoun ''io'' but I can omit it because the form ''parlo'' is just for that person. I am a native Spanish speaker and my language follows the same rule.
That is a great explanation and makes a lot of sense. Im wondering why, though, sometimes it asks for a pronoun and sometimes it doesnt.
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Very helpful answer. However I didn't think you'd use la in your example of "la mia mamma" - can any native speakers confirm? Have seen in other exercises that family members don't need the article. Thx
I'm not a native speaker but for what it's worth I've heard the same: that in Italian you put the definite article before the possessive-adjective-followed-by-a-noun, eg "la mia casa" ("my house") but not when referring to family members, so I think it should be "mia mamma".
Wow... Excellent explanation. That time also apply to Spanish, I guess it's because Italian and Spanish share the same origen... Latin
And so does French and Portuguese i can understand some because Italian French and Portuguese are sort of like spanish so yeaaah hope it also gave u a tip if u are planning on learning Spanish :-)
True, Latin didn't make much use of subject pronouns as the inflexions on the verb made them unnecessary, and Italian and Spanish have followed their parent language. Strange that French should be so different.
Yeah, except in French they also have different conjugated forms of the verb for different persons, so the information about the person is also contained in the verb form, and yet they still require those personal pronouns :q (and all of that despite being lazy in other areas of the language, e.g. dropping so much in speech at the end of words unless they are forced to pronounce it). So this really explains nothing about why some languages allow to drop personal pronouns while others don't.
Why can't I say "we all drink water" instead of "We drink water"? is there a difference?
"We all" and "We" are not the same.
For example, you and your buddy are in a group of ten people. Only you and your buddy are drinking water; everyone else is drinking beer. The waiter comes to your table and says, "More beer?" You would reply, "We're drinking water," (indicating you and your buddy). You would not say, "We are all drinking water," because the other eight people are not drinking water.
But this is a shortcoming of the English language in which there's no clear distinction between singular "you" and plural "you". Well, unless you're a Southerner, then you just say "y'all" for the plural, problem solved ;) But yeah, DuoLingo better accept the "you all" for those who want to emphasize that they meant the plural form, it's better for learning. (And we're not here to learn English, are we? We're here to learn Italian :q )
I think that would be "beviamo l'acqua tutti noi" or similar - there is a difference just as there is in English -emphasising the "all".
I answered "We buy water" and it wasn't correct, although it says drink / buy in the description of the meaning when you tap on the word.
You can't rely on the hints - they are often wrong and can't account for all contexts anyway. You can report this - beviamo never means "we buy" (unless it is part of some obscure idiom I don't know about).
I typed in accidentally 'beviamo acquaa" and it did not count as a typo why?
Why isn‘t it “Noi beviamo acqua“? Why did they leave out “we“ at the beginning?
because that's what the different verb terminations are for. So the "-iamo" implies that the verb is being used for the first person at plural aka "noi"
By saying "beviamo acqua," the assumption is "noi"...why not "they," as in "loro beviamo acqua?" This is what I thought the answer was.
Would be good if the english sentences are given more often and the user has to spell the words letter by letter .
Is there a way to remember that "beviamo" is for "we drink"? I always mix up the pronouns with these words.
Well, there is, if you're Polish, because in Polish, verbs in first person plural have an ending "-my" which is similar to the Italian "-mo". And this should work quite similar way in other Romance languages (based on Latin) – they often have that "m" sound in first person forms. But for English, I don't have any idea. Hmm… Perhaps you could connect that "m" sound with "Me and My friend" or something?
I got it right and it said ibgot it wrong it then showed the answer and it said exactly what i put.
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I typed "We drink water" but it repatedly tells me I got it wrong, it should be "We drink water". ???????
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There seems to be a problem with the audios, the last part of the sentence is not always clear
I had reached Abs. Ob1 at level 4. Something happened and I lost all the work that I had done. Now I have to start back at basic level 1 again. Please explain why this happened. Kieran.
Why would it be "beviamo acqua" instead of "noi beviamo acqua"? Or is it considered the same thing in either case and used the same way?
You can omit subject pronouns in Italian unless there would be ambiguity (eg "beve" might need "lui" or "lei" before it), or you may need the subject pronoun for emphasis.
I'm confused. When do we use "the," such as acqua vs. l'acqua. Maybe more better, when do we not use "the."
Do you mean drinking as an adjective (ie "water for drinking"?) - if so, I think it might be "l'acqua da bere" or something like that. If you mean the gerund (eg "we are drinking water"), this can be the same phrase in Italian "Beviamo l'acqua". However, for an action CURRENTLY IN PROGRESS, the Italians would use the present continuous: "Stiamo bevendo l'acqua" = "we are drinking water" (at this moment).
"We are drinking water" is not a gerund. In this sentence, "are drinking" is a verb phrase in which "drinking" is present (continuous) participle. Gerunds are nouns, e.g. as in your previous sentence: "Water for drinking" (for what?), or as in "Drinking is my favourite part of life".
Right i said we all drink water an lost a life. Thats what i call an inside job
If I want to leave during a lesson it will not save my progress so I have to stay the whole lesson ,but then I froget it and do another lesson and then in the middle of it I remember and the cycle goes on !
