63 Comments
why Duolingo uses di to say in the... why not a word like nel or nella, etc.?
But Duo also says that "Cosa fai nel pomeriggio?" is completely correct... I almost put "A morning's work"
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"Di mattina" means mornings in general, as opposed to a singel or particular morning. I therefore think a closer translation of "Lavoro di mattina" would be "I work mornings".
Prepositions differ from language to language and often you have to learn them by hart. In English we "are" hungry / seven years old / tired etc. In Italian (and some other languages) you "have" all of these things.
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Thanks. I wondered if it meant tomorrow a,m, or mornings in general. I agree if it’s In general, we should translate in the plural so it’s clear. ( not to suggest English phrases are always unambiguous)
Because Italian uses prepositions differently to English - preposition usage is often idiomatic (and therefore confusing) when you switch from one language to another.
So guys, I will not act like an expert in Italian, but I have found that Italian is sort of like old english. I did not understand why "lavoro di mattina" was "I work in the morning" because I've always understood the article "di" to mean of. When I started to read this sentence in old english, "morning of work," and converted it to how we would speak modernly, it finally made sense. I hope this might has cleared up at least a fraction of misunderstanding.
I get the concept, but definitely not Old English! Old English is an entirely different language that Modern English speakers would not even be able to identify.
I'm not sure whether Jtd means Old English (i.e., the language of the Beowulf poet) or old English (i.e., English which is old, which could mean anything from Old English to the English of Shakespeare or the King James Bible; or even conceivably obsolete language from just a few decades ago). I'd think the natural way to say it in Old English would be the same as modern English (e.g., "ic wyrce on morgenne" or so), but "I work of a morning" is perfectly acceptable, if somewhat poetic/dialectical, in 21st century English, too.
Good point! There's a definite distinction between Old English and old English. Jtd wrote "old english" which I had interpreted to mean Old English.
Also its perfectly good English to say "I work of a morning" when you mean you work every morning, so it seems to me that the Italian seems to be similar when dealing with time periods.
roman2095, I don't know why you've received so many downvotes; allow me to vote you up. "I work of a morning" is proper (though somewhat fancy and old-fashioned) English. You are right.
I understand different places, different types of speech. But I've never heard of such a thing in passing. I don't even think I'd be able to work out what it meant without context.
Yeah, I found out that this does not help out at all when continuing in your studies. My bad. Haha, I think my most recent comment describes what I was probably thinking at the time. Best of luck to y'all.
Does "di mattina" imply every morning or one particular morning (i.e. today morning)?
Just asking because I answered " I worked in the mornings" and got it wrong.
Maybe you got it wrong because you said "I worked"? It is present so it should be "I work".
"Di mattina" is every morning in general. For "I worked in the morning" is for the past > "Ho lavorato di mattina".
Does it sound funny to native Italian speakers to hear, lavoro di la mattina?
I think one of the most important things to remember is that Italian is not English! If you translate everything you see, you will be speaking an English/Italian hybrid of a language. Of course, you need to translate vocabulary words in order to understand what people are saying, but at the same time, you need to study the language as it is in itself, not as it is compared to English. This is because you will run into sentences that don't make sense at all. For example: "Al bambino piace giocare a calcio." This would literally mean something along the lines of "To the boy likes to play to soccer." I hope what I have said makes sense, and I would like to see what you guys have to say about it.
What you need to do is study the preposition used in different sentences. In this instance, you use "di." It is an Italian phrase that roughly means "I work during the morning." "Io lavoro di notte." "Io gioco di sera." "Io mangio di matina." However, the rules that apply to time and other categories are different in Italian. Some sentences go along the lines of, "Questa è la mia casa in Inverno." "Questo è un parco in Estate." etc. I hope this helps, but just remember that this is not English. Study Italian as you see it. Best of luck to you. :)
I confused!!! Some times "di" means "in" sone time"in " means "in" some time "a" means "in"!!!! Could anybody explain it for me? :/
Preposition usage (in, at, on, of,...) is frequently one of the most idiomatic parts of learning a language - sorry. Unfortunately there isn't an easy explanation.
Generally (most commonly): di means of, in means in, a means at, su means on. But there are LOTS of exceptions. One of the exceptions is that Italian uses a with months of the year (eg. a febbraio translates to in February). Another exception is Italians say nel piatto (in the plate) rather than on the plate.
All you can do is learn the most common meaning and then when you encounter exceptions learn them as well.
In Spanish we have the same expression but I think it's considered old fashioned, "trabaja de mañana". We use "en" or "por" instead. "trabaja en /por la mañana". Even among romance languages is hard to make literal translations.
I did too, so had to figure it out in context, and I also knew that "burro" is a masculine-gendered noun, so even though it sounded like "la burro", I reasoned that that was not the right word. I have to go through these kind of thought-processes a lot!
Why is it 'di mattina' here, but 'al pomeriggio' in the previous sentence ("mangio cioccolato al pomeriggio")?
I'm no native speaker, so I'm not completely sure: My guess is that "di" expresses a habit, so by saying "lavoro di mattina" you basically say that you usually work in the morning. In contrast to that, "al" expresses something that is done once at the said time. So "mangio cioccolato al pomeriggio" means you eat chocolate in the afternoon on that given day, but not on every day.
What does "di" literally mean? I'm quite mixed up with all the prepositions and how they change depending on gender and number or which letter the next word starts with....A table would be handy.
In the audio LaVoro sounds like LaBoro with a 'b'. Is this just an exceptional case, or are words with a 'v' in them pronounced like the English 'b'? Thanks.
"I work mornings" is wrongly translated in english. There's a preposition missing.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by "wrongly translated". We do say "I work mornings" in English. It means "I work every morning" in this context.
Yeah, I get that all the ime... th epronunciation is really awfull. I get most mistakes simply because I don't understand some sentences.
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It should be ' work of the morning ' or ' morning's work '. Confusingly using 'di'
Apparently they are both used and mean morning. "la mattina" is most common but "il mattino" is used in certain fixed expressions and proverbs. This writer's bottom line is stick with "mattina" unless quoting a fixed expression or a proverb. Here is a link for examples: https://blogs.transparent.com/italian/mattina-o-mattino/
why it is wrong to say “siamo d'autunnon(or any other season), but it's ok to say"lavoro di mattina"?
I work the m o r n i n g s - was your correction mattina : is it not singular?
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Would it be correct to say "lovoro alla matina" (i.e. instead of 'di' mattina)?
