"How much bread do you eat?"
Translation:Quanto pane mangi?
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I'm not getting the quant(o|i|e|a) distinctions... I thought the question word, like adjectives, takes the same ending as the noun it attaches to?
Good eye! It isn't a question of making sure the final letters are the same, but they do indicate how they should match. For example, la donna alta and l'uomo alto make it seem like the adjective must end with the same letter as the noun. But then you find adjectives that end in -e such as speciale or verde and you have to keep in mind that they only change if the noun is plural, gli uomini sono speciali or le torte sono verdi. There are other exceptions as well, such as adjectives that don't change at all.
Here are a few examples for the quanto case:
- Quanta frutta hai? How much fruit do you have?
- Quante donne mangiano frutta? How many women eat fruit?
- Quanti uomini bevono vino? How many men drink wine?
- Quanto sale abbiamo? How much salt do we have?
As you can see, most of them follow your rule, except for the last one. Sale is masculine singular, but might be misleading because it ends in -e. Nouns that end in -e can be either gender... it does take some memorization.
I hope that's somewhat clear!
So the ending doesn't match the person doing the eating, it matches the food being eaten. Thee is doubtless a rule for these things which I will learn as I go.
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Right. The amount of something and the something must agree. How many dresses do you have would be Quanti vestiti hai? for example
To be precise, the grammatical number (singular or plural) and the grammatical gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) have to agree.
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How did you make this conclusion? The above examples use frutta twice and yet each time quanto's ending is spelled differently based on who is eating it...
The first option Quanta frutta .. Was a single fermine hence .. The quanta but the 2nd was for plural fermine hence it changed to quante( being the f plural as donne is showing its in the plural)
Hope i helped.. Also learning along
They said the amount of something and the something have to match right? In how many fruit it's quanta because of frutta. Quante because it's number of donne. Quanti - number of gli uomini That's my guess.
It's not totally hopeless for nouns that end in e. Nouns that end in - ione are feminine and ones that end in - ore are masculine. Of course, for nouns that follow neither of these patterns, such as chiave, pane, pesce etc., there is nothing for it but brute force memorisation. Sorry.
Thank you, you probably saved me 10 times the lingot I gave you in hearts I won't lose anymore.
quanto pane si mangia? that's the first time i see it. I guess it has something to do with how you form a question? And why is "quanto pane tu mangi" wrong? Truth be told, it didn't sound right when i wrote it but still i don't understand why..
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Good question! I'd like to know the answer to your question as well, never heard of the "si mangia" construction before.
In terms of the second question, I think in this case the subject/verb order is different, because it's not a statement, so the question word goes before the verb and the subject gets bumped after the verb. Kind of like in German -- Wieviel Brot isst du? (really hoping there isn't a mistake in the German because lol it's been a while since I was actually practicing in a class)
So.....Quanta and Quanto seem to be "How much" feminine/masculine respectively.....and Quante and Quanti seem to be "How many" (looks like plural to me) feminine/masculine. Si?
How many breads? 1 bread. 4 breads. These could be correct when referring to types of bread, but it's asking for how much bread. (Lots, none, 4 loaves a week).
To me, much is singular, many is plural.
Yeah, I typed that as well as bread is both plural and singular in English. And when you ask how many, you use the plural.
Hmmm.... I'm confused. I put "Quanto mangi pane?" and was marked wrong. I thought in an interrogative sentence the order is switched and the verb comes before the subject... It sounded good to me anyways :)
Quanto mangi pane? = How much you eat bread. It's not the right translation for the exercise, although it is a workable sentence in Italian... if the noun at the end is actually a pronoun. Let's say you're doing a show with talking bread and you want to ask it about its eating habits: Quanto mangi, Pane? More realistically: Quanto mangi, Jenna? == Jenna, quanto mangi?
I got it now, thank you. =) I don't even remember why I asked that silly question!
You asked it, so someone like me don't needed too ;) Thank you for being curios. I had the same thoughts. So I am glad you did.
The subject always seems to go last, that's what the trend appears to be.
Why is 'quanti pane tu mangi' wrong? Sometimes the tu is required, sometimes it ia fine to either include it it not, and now they are saying you must not include it. I don't get it.
Duolingo taught well till now.but now im stuck in the usage of quanto/i /a....explain wity simple examples pleeeasssseee :(
Reading the comments above, the last letter depends on gender of the noun.
Since 'pane' is male, you use 'quanto'.
You can usually simply use the same last letter as the noun, because that often indicates the gender of the npun. This does not work on nouns ending in e.
The gender of nouns ending in e varies. It's just something you either have to remember for each -e noun or just guess male or female (quanto or quanta) and hope! (Like i do!!)
"Quanto pane tu mangi" è corretto!!! Si può usare anche così!!! Quando vuoi rafforzare TU!!!
'Quanto pane si mangia' is what Duolingo came back with. Now I am really confused
This article explains other uses for si: http://italianencounter.com/italian-grammar/italian-si/, but if you're only level 7, it doesn't really make sense that you're encountering that. That would translate roughly as "How much bread do people/you eat? Think of it in terms of a Google search question. It would be generic, like: "How much bread do you eat before you get sick from a gluten allergy?" You aren't really asking Google directly how much it can eat before it feels sick. You is generic, as in "How much bread does one need to eat?"
Anyway, if you got that answer from an alternative correct sentence, it's probably just there for advanced users who duolingo to keep the language fresh in their minds. It's not wrong, although the meaning is a little different.
Ignoring the word order, mangi and tu are redundant. Tu is already implied by the conjugation of mangiare. It's wrong in this word order because that's the rule. Lei mangia / Tu mangi / Io mangio. Just like in English, if you say "Mangio Io", that means 'Eat I', not 'I eat'. So, Quanto pane mangi tu = How much bread do you eat you.
I wrote the same thing and got marked wrong because Duolingo said I should have used the voi form instead. I'm not sure why the tu form would be any less right than the voi form in this case.
Reading some of the commemts above, 'si' is like a generic 'you', when not referring directly to the person you are speaking to.
Olde english 'si' would translate to 'one'.
Eg, How much sun do you need? (Not you personally). How much sun does one need? You would use 'si' here not 'tu'.
How do I know when to use quanto or quante. Why "Quanto pane mangi" and not Quante pane mangi?
I put 'quanto pane mangia' and it was marked as correct, but shouldn't it be 'cuanto pane mangi' as theq correct declinations are tu mangi and lui mangia?
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I don't understand. If pane ends with an e, shouldn't it be quante? Nothing in the sentence ends with an o
Why is it mangi with the i at the end when asking How much bread do you eat?
Done just fought though the possessive now this if i put an e it is an o and visa versa. Doesn't make any sense. Might as well quit and bang my head against a wall. I would get more out of it.
Why can't we use the article here and say, "Quanto il pane mangi?"
I'm really confused about when and when not to use the article in both statements and questions.