"The mirror is on the wall."
Translation:Lo specchio sta sul muro.
28 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
DL threw folks a curve ball with this translation. Yes, you could get away with 'è' (is) and be understood. The correct translation relies upon the infinitive 'stare' and not the infinitive for 'essere.' Essere=to be. Stare= to stand, to be located, and to be with regard to health (e.g. Sto bene= (literally) I stand well. DL is not providing insight into the context of words; particularly new vocabulary.
I wish we could have a separate storage for all the comments we give lingots ;-)
Essere and stare can be used nearly interchangeably in terms of remaining in one place:
- il negozio sta sulll'angolo/il negozio è sull'angolo
- mia moglie sta a casa oggi/mia moglie è a casa oggi
- lo zucchero sta dietro il sale/lo zucchero è dietro il sale
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Just in case anyone is flummoxed like I was for using - è - and was marked wrong, with a correct answer given - sta -. I was marked wrong, I think, only because I typed 'Il specchio' instead of 'Lo specchio'.
Duo lingo should prepare you for this usage of 'stare' instead of 'essere'. If you understand the logic you can learn, this is better than learning parrot fashion
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Duo really forced a mistake on this one. The essere conjugation is more commonly used where stare is hardly used. If they want to teach us when to use stare instead of essere, then they need to introduce it more regularly in lessons. Like, rotate it with essere rather than have us use essere regularly THEN suddenly drop stare out of of nowhere. That's where you frustrate learners.
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I was confused about this sentence because I was thinking about the wrong kind of wall. . . is there any difference between the wall of a home and, say, the Great Wall of China?
Actually, there are a few words for wall: la parete di camera tua, la grande muraglia di Cina, il muro di Berlino... both parete and muro can be used for walls inside a house, though parete is more specific and muro is a safe word to use for more general wall discussions.
duolingo doesn't accept parete for this sentence for some reason. I wrote, "Lo specchio e' sulla parete" and it marked it as a mistake and only gave il muro as the correct answer.
My boyfriend explained last night 'muro' is more like the structure of the wall while 'parete' is the surface of the wall (more likely the one we should really use in this lesson). He said he builds a muro, but paints the parete.
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I have never heard this. Like saying there is two types of floor. The one you build and the one you polish
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a very general breakdown is that essere is about being/existing and stare is about location especially of things. existence and location get blurred when you refer to people. about people you would probably use essere to locate them somewhere. (not for a person to be on the wall, of course.)
Why 'su' is not enough here? I saw that e.g. 'in cucina' = 'in the kitchen'. Is there some rule here?
