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- "Sei venuta in città?"
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In French, the usual rule is that verbs that describe bodily motion or transformation are conjugated with 'to be' rather than 'to have' - I wonder if it's the same with Italian (eg, venir, descendre, entrer, devenir, etc).
Except of course for the verb 'essere' which unlike French is conjugated with itself as the auxiliary verb.
The general rule is the same, but some exceptions are not. Examples of verbs conjugated with different auxiliary verbs in both languages: essere/être (to be), sembrare/sembler (to seem), bastare/suffire (to be enough), costare/coûter (to cost), durare/durer (to last), esistire/exister (to exist), scadere/expirer (to expire).
Also, some bodily motion verbs use avere/avoir in both languages. Examples: camminare/marcher (to walk), viaggiare/voyager (to travel).
Also in German :) "sein" for movement/transformation and "haben" for else
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I wrote "Have you arrived in the city"? and it was deemed wrong. Perhaps "Have you come to the city?" would be better?
Would anybody ever say "Have you come INTO London?" ? I don't think so.
I could see saying, "Have you come into London?" if you're from an area not too far from outside of it and heading into the major part of the city. At any rate I really hope I asked about this a LONG time ago because I read my question and I feel dumb for asking it. -.-
On a call from a mobile when you don't know where the person is, you might say, Did you come into the city?
venuta instead of venuto? Does the past participle change with the gender??
The past participle change with the gender if it is only preceded by essere and not avere, it is like in French, same rule. As i know French very help, this help me a lot to pass this lesson
Also i would like to add that if the verb has a clitic for direct object the past participle must change with gender even it is avere. For example, l'ho trovata/i found her, l'ho trovato/i found him
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When the clitic is 'lo'/'la', you are not required to change the past participle's ending - it is optional. You are only required to change the ending when the clitic is 'li'/'le'.
Yes, but the verb here is about someone who's coming to the city, not the city. So, who says it should be feminine? Why?
It's feminine because the person being spoken to is female. Not that there's any context with this sentence, but we know because the verb is "sei venuta" instead of "sei venuto." If "venuto" were used, the subject would be male. It seems confusing with second person I think because there's no context, but likewise, the participle agrees with the subject in other persons. For instance, in first person--if a male were speaking, he would say "(io) sono venuto" and if a female were speaking, she would say "(io) sono venuta."
It's weird, I was commenting after the task with translating English into Italian, and I wrote "venuto" as a more common form. That's why I was wondering how we're supposed to know, if it's masculine or feminine if there is no difference in English. The difference in Italian is quite clear, thanks.
Oh, I understand now...that is really weird. I didn't realize we were looking at the sentence in reverse.
"It's feminine because the person being spoken to is female" How do you know that?
Because the subject is being addressed with "sei venuta" instead of "sei venuto." You would use "sei venuta" to talk to females and "sei venuto" to talk to males.
The exercise i had, to transcribe the whole sentence, it sounded like venuto and that was an option in the wordbank, but it wasn't accepted.
Maybe a lot of people might say that (going by the number of upvotes on your comment), but where movement from the outside to the inside is involved "into" is normally used rather than "in"
Because that might be interpreted as, Have you orgasmed in the city?!
The hoover hints over "venuta" say "coming", I have reported the issue, but there is no way to use "coming" in the answer
This would not be correct. 'sei venuto/a' is passato prossimo (near past) and means 'came' or 'have come'. I can't think of a sense in which venuta/o would mean 'coming'.
exactly, that was the point of my message. to inform others that is it not possible to use "coming" in this answer. Thanks for backing me up
why Sei and not Hai?
This has been asked a couple times and not actually answered on this thread, so if someone could help me that would be great.
So in this sentence "venuta" gave away the actual meaning to be in the past for me so I translated it as 'have you come into the city' which is correct however I'm confused because I actually wanted to translate it as 'are you coming into the city' so my question is why has Sei been used here and not hai? when in all other past forms hai, ho, ha etc seem to be used.
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When the verb you are turning into a past participle is a verb of motion (to run, to come, to go, etc.), you use "essere" instead of "avere" for the auxiliary verb.
(Amer. English speaker): This is just not said in English. We would say "came to" the city or "arrived at" the city.
More to the point: "to arrive" is arrivare, not venire, which is "to come".
some verbs take essere in the past tense and some take avere like in French. Can anybody show us the list of verbs for avere/essere? (whichever is shorter) a lingot to whoever can!
Could someone explain this please? "Have you come into the city?" sounds to me like someone asking someone else if he or she has arrived, but in Italian it looks like "Are you coming into the city?" to me.
For some verbs the present perfect are conjugated using essere (to be) and not avere (to have), You have to learn the exceptions, there are many of them. Good luck :)
A grammar I just read suggested intransitive (without direct objects) verbs form the present perfect with essere rather than avere. (In these constructions the past participles agree with the subject in gender and number.) I'm not sure if this is an absolute rule...
There should be some explanation of Italian tenses (or other grammatical features like in the old version of DL)
(American English speaker) I think that in Italian, the verbs that take "essere" as the auxiliary instead of "avere" are still translated as" ...have" in English
Because the "passato prossimo" tense of the verb "venire" requires the auxiliary verb "essere", not "avere".
Exactly my thought, Jan534792! 'Have you been in/to the city? is a more 'natural' translation of this sentence into English. Or, 'Have you arrived in the city?' (yet)'. Here is a lingot...
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In the exercise I had, what was given was "Sei __ in citt`a." and a list of words with both venuto and venuta in them. There was absolutely no context with the "sei." In this type of exercise fill in the blank should have been fine with venuto or venuta, but Duolingo said my venuta was wrong.
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Since there is no context regarding the subject, venuto or venuta should be equally correct. Duolingo marked venuto as incorrect which seem wrong to me!
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Why couldn't this be a statement such as, "You came into the city." How do we know it's a question?
In the written form, there is a interrogation mark at the end of the sentence. In the spoken form, there is a change of intonation at the end of any question.
Why on earth is venuta (f.) correct and venuto wrong? Sei is gender-nonspecific.
