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- "The cat eats the bird."
"The cat eats the bird."
Translation:Il gatto mangia l'uccello.
59 Comments
97
If there were no apostrophe it would read, "la uccello"? Shouldn't it be "il uccello"? Or is this an exception where a noun ending in O is feminine?
Well, the thing is that "il" (which is the Italian article "the" for masculine nouns) is used only in front ofmasculine nouns that start with a consonant. For nouns that start with a vowel, you use "lo" (masculine article "the")and "lo" is also used for nouns starting with "z" or "s-impure" (i.e. sbaglio, squalo, zoo). When you use "lo" in front of "uccello", you contract the two words, so you get "l'uccello"...
I had the same question between "il uccello" and "l'uccello". Two questions earlier in a "choose word blocks" question, the only option was "il" for an article and it marked Correct for "il uccello", which is confusing since I learned the above.
The only difference was "il uccello" was in the subject and "l'uccello" here is in the predicate.
Any insight?
1452
The present tense of the verb does not depend on gender, rather on who is involved and the number of people. So "mangiare" is conjugated this way: I eat = mangio; you (singular) eat = mangi; he/she/it eats = mangia; we eat = mangiamo; you (plural) eat = mangiate; and they eat = mangiano.
Here is a website that will show you the conjugation, simple and complex, of Italian verbs: http://coniugazione.reverso.net/coniugazione-italiano.html. Enter the infinitive form of the verb and click on "coniuga" (conjugate).
To put it simply, those are all the variants for the article "the". In English, we have one definite article which we use for everything. But most other languages have to have the article agree with the gender as well as the number. For example, we say "the cows", or "the cow", and the article stays the same. But in Italian, the article changes depending on whether the noun is masculine, feminine, singular or plural. So for singular masculine nouns, the article is "il", unless the noun starts with either a "z" or "s-impure" (which is an "s" followed by another consonant). In that case, the article becomes "lo". ("Lo zoo"). Feminine nouns are "la". I wish I could direct you to a link, but I think you should be able to just Google "Italian articles" ....
instead of using "il gatto" to say "the cat" can you say "il felino" because it accepts that as a translation when you hover over it but when you type it, it says it's wrong... thanks