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- "Their bear is hungry."
"Their bear is hungry."
Translation:Il loro orso ha fame.
72 Comments
it's the infinitive. so it would be "wir hungern" and "sie hungern", but it's also the basic form of the verb and you can use it for any person and tense. "ich hungere", "du hungerst"... It doesn't mean exactly the same as "Ich habe Hunger"/"Ich bin hungrig" (which both mean "I'm hungry"). "hungern" is something quite serious and lasting usually, more like "to be famished" or "to famish"
So 'the horse' is il cavallo, right? In English we would just say that it's 'their horse,' without adding 'the' in front of it again. It's not really important for us to do that because nouns don't really have (grammatical) genders. But since in Italian we have to specify that 'horse' is a masculine word, we stick 'the' into the possessive statement as well (or at least, that's my guess as to the reasoning behind this rule). 'Loro' means 'they' as a subject but it's also, apparently, a possessive adjective. So we just stick 'loro' in its assigned slot between the noun and the article (which helps to specify the gender of the noun). End result: 'il loro cavallo.'
(Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, I do NOT feel like an expert in Italian XD)
1643
If it is "l'orso", why isn't it "lo loro orso"? Isn't "l'" just an abbreviation of "lo"?
Yes, it is; however the article doesn't depend on the word it refers to, but literally on the following letters, e.g. "la montagna" but "l'alta montagna", "lo stadio" but "il nuovo stadio". Most adjectives would go after the noun, but for those that go before, like the possessives, you have to consider this as well :)
Because, that's the way they form sentences. Remember, you are learning one of the oldest languages, which is latin based. They say things backwards sometimes as well. Don't try and match the words exactly to English. Good idea, look into the structure of Italian sentences, it may help. ie: "John's book" would be "the book of John" Il libro di John.