"Ognuno dei suoi figli ha la propria stanza."
Translation:Each of his children has his own room.
24 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Doesn't "figli" mean "children"? i.e. sons or daughters of unspecified gender? I think that in this case we use "their" in English. Infact "their" is increasingly used in speech after a singular verb when the gender is unknown or irrelevant
I agree with this, "their" should be accepted, especially as gender is unspecified and there are more than one of them.
This is the flipside of the issue I just talked about on another translation.
That one was too loose and adding a linking verb (are) while changing the tense of the main verb (from work to working), which could potentially change the meaing if given more context. That should have been more strict.
This one should be looser. Their doesn't change the meaning in English in the slightest, even if it isn't the literal translation.
And in fact it's seen as more incorrect in English to assume masculinity nowadays than it is to just use their as a substitute for his/her.
986
Yes, I think that is now completely correct. In the absence of a non gender specific singular possessive, even educated speakers and writers are using "their". For a long time I didn't like it, and tried to avoid it by using "his or her" or recasting the sentence in the plural, but now I embrace this usage of "their".
'Their' own room is till not accepted, and it should be. Figli can mean sons and daughters. 'Theirs' is commonly accepted English in this case.
- 2923
I think this sentence has two parts which are "debated" in English. (1) each has or each have, and (2) his/her own room or their own room. At least according to the below source, it is debated even by usage panels: http://www.grammar.com/each-singular-or-plural/
I think all variants should in principle be accepted.
I think:
"Each of his children/sons have his/their own room." is wrong.
Substituting like so:
"Each one has his/their own room." shows that 'have' doesn't work.
It only sounds right in context of the plural 'children/sons' and seemingly plural 'their' (seemingly plural because 'their' is used here to mean a single person of unspecified gender).
- 2378
In English, "each has his own" is correct. Many English speakers say "their", and it's incorrect. Like Italian, I learned that unspecified gender defaults to masculine. (I'm a native English-speaker.)
While this was true and many "purists" still cling to that, what is correct is what is actually used by most people and is seen as correct by most people.
These days it's often viewed as wrong to assume masculinity, and thus their is a much more common substitute for the classical he (or she if the writer so chose to assume femininity).
So yes, in old English you would say he, but in modern English the majority say their.
- 986
I'm afraid this particular horse has already bolted, and even well educated people are using "their", in both spoken and written English.
the word figlio means son, figli is plural of figlio therefore figli means sons. However, DL rejects the word sons and imposes one to say children. Is DL dictatorial?
inconsistency again. Ok,I mis-typed "everyone" instead of "Every one" but at other times this type of error is accepted with a "oh,oh, you have a typo"
"La" is not "his", it's the feminine definite article followed by the feminine form of the adjective "propria" and the feminine noun "stanza".
A literal translation would be "Each of his children has the own room", but that makes no sense in English. Since "proprio/a", meaning "own", implies possession, the possessive pronoun is not needed in Italian, but it is needed in English.
There are some example sentences here: https://blogs.transparent.com/italian/proprio/
Italian doesn't have this problem because "propria" agrees with the noun and no possessive pronoun is necessary in the Italian sentence.
So it's a question of what's best in English, and in general, I think we avoid using "it" or "its" to refer to a person. The standard (which I realize is sexist) is to use "his" when we don't know the gender or when we're referring to a member of a mixed group.
But more and more, people are using "they" and "theirs" in these situations instead of just "his" or "his/her" or "his or her", which sound awkward because they are.
While "ognuno" is singular, it refers to each one of the children, so "their" might not sound out of place in this sentence.
Whether or not Duo accepts it is another story.
Why isnt sons accepted? I hate when duo forces you to know which option it is thinking. The more i use this app the more i realise its poorly put together.
I wrote that the audio does not sound correct. But correct is not the right word. It sounds muffled, like the tape has been stretched. The three lessons I have done today have both a new male and a new female voice, and the audio is muffled on both.
