47 Comments
Articles are used pretty often in Italian, so why doesn't this sentence use 'le caramelle'?
I'm not sure if this also holds for Italian, but in Spanish (I'm a native speaker) I would use the article if there were a certain amount of known candy I'm not eating, and I wouldn't use the article if I were saying I don't eat candy at all or I don't use to eat candy.
^I second that. Also a native Spanish speaker. Spanish and Italian are very similar (if not identical) in sentence structure.
i third (native speaker :)) in fact, if you know spanish, italian, french, or portugese it is easier to learn any of the other languages. they are also called the love languages.
Technically, they are called Romance languages, and nit because they express love, but because they derive from the Roman's latin. Roman- romance
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This would be the same in English. So the question is how does one differentiate between the two scenarios in Italian?
Articles do not exsist in Russian.. makes everything just that much more difficult...
In American English we don't say "We do not eat candies" but "We don't eat candy".
Candy is American usage. In English they would be "sweets". The first time I encountered "la caramella, le caramelle" I guessed the meaning as toffee (or caramel)
I didn't. I am an Australian citizen, born and "brung up" in Scotland. I had to stop calling them "sweeties"! I also had to stop saying "ice lolly" and change to "icy pole".
Thank you Birdfishy. The first time I heard the word " lolly " was in NZ where my daughter born in Ireland, lives. I even answer " not too shabby " when people ask me how I am. Ciao !
The word caramelle always refers to more than one sweet, but it can be confusing because this is something an English speaker would translate as either "candy" (mass noun) or "candies" (countable). The concept is simpler in Italian:
- do you like candy? ti piacciono le caramelle?
- do you like (the piece of candy/the candy/the sweet)? ti piace la caramella?
- this is my favorite (piece of candy/sweet/candy). questa è la mia caramella preferita.
- these are my favorite candies. queste sono le mie caramelle preferite.
Hope this makes sense :)
Yes and thank you reakly much. So la caramella is probably for a piece of candy and le caramelle is for lots of candies
As an American, every time it makes me write caramelle, I write carmel instead of candy.
I wrote "we are not eating candy" and it said I am wrong. What would be the reason for this? My understanding is that, for example, "mangiamo le torte" and "stiamo mangiando le torte" would mean the same thing (we are eating the cakes).
I think UK 'sweets' should be accepted as well as US 'candies'. Reported
By this point in the lessons, they assume you know or can infer what the words you've already studied mean. A masculine noun ends with "o" in the singular tense, and ends in "i" if it is plural. Likewise for the feminine "a" to "e".
Duolingo gave "lollies" for caramelle seems a very strange translation.Can accept my "toffees" not acceptable-but better than "lollies"
"Candies" is American-English. We need an English-English option. We say "sweets."
