- Forum >
- Topic: Italian >
- "Io sono alta come lui."
23 Comments
Yes, adjectives and verbs in Italian give away the secrets of the speakers that you can't find in English. Most adjectives change with gender and number. One of the exceptions you'll find are the adjectives that end in -e in the singular, those unfortunately won't indicate whether they are modifying a male or female noun, but they do change in the plural form.
'i am tall like him' is not standard english, "I am as tall as him." is ungrammatical. The proper translation is more like "I am as tall as he."
86
I agree with Duo on this one. "I am as tall as he," may be grammatically correct, but it is not common usage and sounds affected. Sometimes ya just gotta go with the colloquial.
"I am tall like he (is)" is the correct form, but even newspapers and advertisements use "I am tall, like him." Since so few people use object pronouns correctly in American English, I suspect that the rule will change, if it has not already. A simple rule to follow in English is that, if the pronoun you choose can be followed with a verb, then it should be a subject pronoun (she, he) not an object pronoun (her, him). It sounds more natural to people if you go ahead and include the verb, as in "I am tall like he is" rather than leaving it out, "I am tall like he." The latter is correct, but if you leave out the second comparative verb, people want to put an object pronoun there (him, her.) I guess this is because we are used to hearing objects toward the end of a sentence, as a recipient of an action verb. (I wrote {to} him. I followed him. I kissed him.) Modern American English has become somewhat word order static that way, except when forming questions. Remember, too, that a second subject pronoun in a sentence is a result of an intransitive verb, such as when making the comparison in this exercise: He is this type, I am that type; like she (is), like we (are). These are verbs of "being;" there is no recipient if an action. Re: Intransitive verbs: "I sleep" is another intransitve. There is no recipient of the action of sleeping, so there is no direct object of it, but since it is not comparative, as our exercise is, it doesn't have the same dilemma of choosing subject vs object pronouns.
Exactly! Duolingo's English grammar is incorrect; it should be "as he."
Yes, still not fixed and no way to comment on it in the 3 options they give. Should definitely be "as tall as he," not "him"
Would a better translation for this be "I am tall like him," or "I am as tall as him"? It accepts both, but they seem to convey considerably different meanings.
In English, technically "as tall as him" is not grammatically correct. You can say ""as tall as he is" or "I am tall like he is" or "I am tall like him."
io sono alte lui was a fill in the blank on the word alte. it was marked incorrect because the correct was supposed to be I am as tall as him and (alta) i translated it to I am tall like him and my answer was "alte" both answers should be correct. Also still being asked to translate a sentence in English to an English translation and vice versa. Driving me crazy as I am unable to complete lessons because of it after answering every possible solution all were incorrect.
As I understand it, alta is for a feminine entity---Io sono una alta donna but io sono un alto uomo. Io is for the pronoun "I" --it gets feminine adjectives if the subject is a female, masculine if the subject is male. Alto is for a male "io." If the answer is "Io sono alta come lui," the speaker (io) must be female.
Thanks HelenHalva. It gets confusing when male/female or possession rules are required. Step by step I'll get there
this feels like a trick question - we're supposed to intuit that the speaker is female.. either alto or alta should be accepted
