"I do not have time."
Translation:Io non ho tempo.
29 Comments
It has a slighty different meaning. Adding il you are referring to the time needed to do a specific thing. I'm not a native English speaker but I think you would translate it I don't have the time [to do this]
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But "I don't have time" also means "I don't have the time [to do this]" doesn't it? I don't know which other context you would use "I don't have time."
What I wanted to say is that "Non ho il tempo" sounds very odd by itself (i.e. without specifying what you are supposed to do). But I suppose it may work as an answer to a question that specifies the activity.
Do the English expressions have the same exact meaning?
Normally "I don't have the time" means one of two things in English: I don't have time to do a specific thing. OR it can be in response to someone asking what time it is.
Are you a native Italian speaker? I'm still learning when to use il (et al) and when not to or how to interpret it exactly from Italian.
Hi, I'm an Italian speaker. Unfortunately there are no simple rules, just a long list of exceptions: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articolo_(linguistica)#Uso
In this case I believe that the rule is similar for Italian and English: "the time/il tempo" can be understood as "the amount of time needed to do a specific action", while "time" (without the article) is just an abstract noun. Since the English version doesn't have the article, I would feel its addition as an improper modification of the meaning of the phrase.
In my language (dutch), saying "i don't have THE time" - "io non ho il tempo", would mean that you don't know what time it is, that you don't have a watch/clock(/phone) with you. Could this work for Italian? (English?)
It means that in English too. Someone could ask what time it is for instance.
Volta doesn't work in situations that can be counted in hours and minutes (like your example, not having time) but it works in other translations of time:
- Uno alla volta/one at a time
- Da quella volta/from that time, since then
- A volte/sometimes, at times
- Ogni volta che/each time that...
- 2008
"né" is "neither/nor". If you wanted to say "I have neither time nor money" then you would say "Non ho né tempo né denaro". But since there is only one thing, then just like in English, you would not say "I have neither time", you would simply say "Non ho tempo".
This is an italian expression that means 'I can't wait '(e.g. to see you again)
Didn't we learn, in an earlier lesson, that "non vedo l'ora" is a translation of this? I tried it and it was rejected. I'm puzzled.
Whether to include the definite article or not seems a vexed question in Italian. In another thread, there is a post advising that including the definite article in any case of doubt will make you correct 99% of the time; apparently this sentence is in the remaing 1%! But I cannot extract any rule which would help me elsewhere...
