- Forum >
- Topic: Italian >
- "I know nothing about women."
"I know nothing about women."
Translation:Non so niente di donne.
55 Comments
"Non so niente delle donne" worked for me. "... di donne" & "... delle donne" interchangeable?
"delle" is kind of a contraction of "of + the" so it adds the definite article, which is acceptable. I think it does, however, change the meaning slightly. "I know nothing about THE women" or "of the women" might be taken to mean a specific group of women rather than women in general. That is my understanding, but full disclaimer, I'm a beginner, as well.
me too would really appreciate an answer to this question, as it is really confusing which preposition is to be used at which place ...
When you use niente/nulla or nessuno you have to negate the verb as well, so "non so niente" rather than "so niente".
"Sulle" is the preposition "su" combined with the definite article "le". That's serving the same purpose as the English "about" here.
I wrote "non so niente su di donne" as I saw that construction earlier. Unfortunately I made a dumb mistake causing it not to be accepted, but I was wondering if "su di" is acceptable here.
No; "su di" is only commonly used before pronouns (e.g. su di me, on me) or sometimes before the indeterminate article (e.g. su di una collina, on a hill).
shouldn't 'non so niente circa donne' be accepted? if not then is it the same to say 'i know nothing about the women'
Four years late, so I'm guessing you've figured this out by now, but I believe that "circa" and "quasi" mean "about" in the sense of "approximately": "It's about a five mile walk". (Circa actually has this same meaning in English, as well, as does quasi- as a prefix.)
So while those are translations for "about", they're not quite right in this case where "about" means "relating to".
Because niente means anything/nothing based upon the way the verb is used (as in "non so" compared to "so") doesn't "non so niente di donne" mean "I don't know anything about women"? Wouldn't "So niente di donne" mean "I know nothing about women"?
Italian, like many other languages, has what's called negative concord. "Non so niente" is how they say it and "so niente" is considered ungrammatical or odd-sounding.
The "su" is extraneous. It's a bit like saying "I know nothing of about women."
"Io non conosco di donne"? What's the difference between know and know again?
I have seen no in Italian written as "no" as well as "non." Which one is the correct one?
What is the difference between so and conosco? I used conosco (and got it correct), though the translation it wanted was so. Is there no difference or is there something that we should know?
This is a difference that many European languages have, including German (kennen vs können) and Dutch, French (savoir vs connaître) and also Italian. Conosco mostly means "to be acquainted with, to have met" and in general is used for people. You use it for "know" in the sense "do you know that girl over there?" or "I don't know you". Also see this discussion on Duo: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/2088826
Why is ( non so ) correct And ( non lo so ) not
Thank you already for helping.
Quoting another comment elsewhere on this page:
No; "su di" is only commonly used before pronouns (e.g. su di me, on me) or sometimes before the indeterminate article (e.g. su di una collina, on a hill).
when to use "Conosco" and when to use "So"? and from my experience in duolingo, they're not interchangeable..
It's similar to Spanish. "Conoscere" is for intimate knowledge, "sapere" is for facts and figures.
If you know someone, it's "conoscere". If you know about someone, it's "sapere".
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/2088826/Differentiating-between-sapere-and-conoscere
First, "conostro" is not a word in Italian. You're thinking of "conosco".
https://www.italian-verbs.com/italian-verbs/conjugation.php?parola=conoscere
Second, that's the wrong verb. You want "so".
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/2088826/Differentiating-between-sapere-and-conoscere
https://www.italian-verbs.com/italian-verbs/conjugation.php?parola=sapere
Third, you're missing half of the negation. It needs to be "non so niente di donne". It's called negative concord and it's somewhat similar to adjective agreement.
It should be different. Beucause if you DON'T know NOTHING, then you do know something. It is a double denial.
Language is not math. Many languages have what's called negative concord. It's kind of similar to how adjectives must agree with nouns.
