"The turtle is certainly not ours."
Translation:La tartaruga non è certo nostra.
33 Comments
Is the Italian here correct?
It sounds as if it would translate "The turtle is not certainly ours" which is unnatural in English- or colloquially "It's not certain that the turtle is ours" which would carry a completely different meaning than "The turtle is certainly not ours".
I tried "La tartaruga certamente non e (w/accent) la nostra"...but the OTHER "turtle" was unhappy.
you have a great point there; exactly, it's uncommon, even unnatural in English. It starts to make some sense once you think "è certo nostra" = "it's certainly ours".
74
This seems to be a standard pattern in Italian. Another sentence from Duo:
Non è assolutamente possibile. -- It's absolutely impossible.
So I guess we just have to accept that this is the Italian word order.
I am a native U. S. English speaker. "The turtle is certainly not ours" is fine. "The turtle is certain not ours" is not good English, and "The turtle is not certainly ours" is not natural.
Really glad I don't have a turtle - and therefor don't have to decide if I am sure that one is mine - or am sure that is not mine or am not sure...
- 1032
I wrote La tartaruga certo non è la nostra. which was not accepted (and reported 4 June 2018) - and which follows the adverb rule you state, BUT the "correct" answer Duo gave me was:
La tartaruga certamente non è la nostra. [I entered this sentence when it came around again at the end of the module, and Duo accepted it. That doesn't always happen. Sometimes, Duo doesn't accept it's own "correct" answers.]
Seems kind of wacky, at least to my thinking.
Similarly, I put the adverb at beginning of the sentence but DL marked it wrong. "Certamente la tartaruga non è la nostra." I reported it but I'm not holding my breath.
- 74
There's nothing to report. Italian word order is different from English. Duolingo is just trying to teach us. Let's not shoot the messenger.
I'm getting this in a drop-down word selection. "...certo non è nostra" has been deemed incorrect twice now. Why would "certo nostra" be correct syntax? Lots of us are confused. Can someone help?
davvero = really; certamente = certainly; these two words are similar, and one might even say synonyms in the right context. But they are two different words. Can they be used interchangeably? Probably, in many instances. But DL is trying to teach you different words, so davvero may not be acceptable in this instance.
I wrote La tataruga certo non è la nostra (because I stupidly didn't recall certamente at the moment). But why is the option "La tartaruga non è certo nostra" more correct?
"La tartaruga certo non è la nostra" -- incorrect
"La tartaruga certamente non è la nostra" -- correct
"La tartaruga non è certo nostra" -- correct
Yes, it doesn't really seem to follow.
"e certo che il tartaruga non e la nostra" would be, in my opinion, a better answer. ''La tartaruga non è certo nostra." doesn't seem to make much sense
- 226
I think the thinking here is as follows:
• "nostra" is simply an adjective, marking that some object belongs to us
• When talking about a certain object that exists, you must put the article (la tartaruga, in this case), because you're basically saying "THE turtle that is ours". This will be the case most of the time your talking about possession, but not always.
• In a case like this, whether or not you have the "la" depends on whether or not there IS a turtle that is ours! With the "la" there in this sentence, you're basically saying "The turtle is certainly not the one that is ours", i.e. "We have a turtle, but it's definitely not that one!" Without the "la" there, you're just saying that one doesn't belong to us, regardless of whether or not we have one. :)
I hope that makes sense!
Wouldn't "non è certo che la tartaruga è nostra" be a more natural way of saying it?
Why is 'la tartaruga non è certo la nostra' wrong? Someone mentioned that 'nostra' here is not a possessive pronoun but a possessive adjective (!!!), but possessive adjectives in English come before a noun (e.g., our turtle), is it different in Italian? The 'ours' in the 'not ours' in the exercise is definitely a possessive pronoun and not an adjective. So why is the article dropped in the use of the possessive pronoun here?
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Only nouns and words that "go with them" (adjectives, articles) have gender. "La" and "nostra" are feminine because they go with "tartaruga." "Certo" is an adverb, so it doesn't have gender.
