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- "Noi siamo uomini."
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Can any one explain why the plural form of l'uomo is "uomini"? Just a beginner here (: Thanks.
I'm out of practice, but I believe it's an irregular plural - much like "goose/geese" or "mouse/mice" in English. Some words, particularly well-used ones, will not follow the pattern that most words follow. This should be better explained on the tool tip at the introduction of this word.
Certainly. The ancients romans spoke latin. And rome is in italy. Much of all the romantic languaged (french, spanish, italian) were built off of latin.
Only latin that ends in -mini that I can think of is second person plural passive verb endings so not sure that can apply here. But I could be missing something. ..
I think youre confusing the stem for the ending. Latin 'domus' becomes domin+i in the genitive. It isnt do+mini.
It is perfectly okay to ask why and every seemingly illogical and irregular feature in languages has a logical reason and interesting history behind it, and it opens up a whole new world of knowledge to one if one just bothers to explore more. Back to the topic: Italian word uomo derives from Latin word homō, which also means man, mankind. Homō is a third declension word and it is in nominative case, its root is homin-, and its nominative plural is hominēs, which developed into Italian plural for uomo, uomini. I recommend Wiktionary, it can sometimes provide quite detailed etymological information. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uomini
I thought you used wikipiedia for your reasech. Whatever yoy do don't use it. Anyone can post anything on that
Dude Zhao,don't get on wikipedia, People write random stuff on there, So your answer might be wrong.
AFAIK wiktionary is monitored by a bunch of quite professional and reliable language nerds and moreover my answer is based on my own knowledge. Wiktionary here just serves as an easy reference for others :)
That may be, but I think what they are trying to say is in academia it is not consistent, and so not considered a reliable source... (which means they can't use it to cite stuff for college papers). Personally I appreciate you are into the etymology, and can look for my own source to verify. Thank you for taking up your time...
Edits are approved by multiple people, some of which are experts. The myth about wikipedia or wiktionary being full of errors is just that.
The plural of 'uomo' is 'uomini' (man --> men). In your case, you wrote 'uomo' with the definite article, -l'uomo- (extended version -lo uomo-) and the plura of -uomo- with the article is -gli uomini-.
It is a 'nome irregolare', an irregular noun so when it changes from singular to plural it doesn't take away the o or a and put an e or i, it completely changes.
This is because of a Latin origin. Homo hominis homini etc.., where Homo (uomo) is singular nominative, while Homines (uomini) is plural nominative.
uomo comes from Latin homo, pl. homines, a third declension noun (declension = noun conjugation class) but the 3rd declension pl. -es ending was replaced in Italian by the originally second declension pl. ending -i, as in canus (dog), cani (dogs). Basically Latin had 5 declensions, and as it developed into Italian, 2-5 were all merged into 2, becoming the masculine, and 1 became feminine (so for 'girl', the Latin was puella sg., puellae pl., as in Italian ragazza, ragazze).
Basically, the extra bit in the plural is a relic from the Latin root.
(P.S. I suspect actually the fate of the Latin 5th and 3rd declensions is probably a bit more complicated than I've described here, but I'm no Italian expert(!), and it serves to demonstrate the point here at least.)
uomo SG. uomini PL, better don't ask why>)) JUst learn it.It is easier so.The l'is from lo( the) In Roumanian om oameni, so are the plurals in latin origin languages)))
It's just like instead of man you say men, so instead of l'uomo you would say uomini
because if you put l'uomo your saying it in singular and plural is uomini that mens men
It translates "uomini" into men/human beings and then, when I translate: "We are humans." says it is wrong. Is there a different word for "human"?
Uomo/uomini are mean human too... but "essere umano" is better to translate human being.
Sono can be 1st person singular ( I am ) or 3 person plural ( they are ). Siamo is 1st person plural ( we are).
"siamo" means "we are"; "sei" means '"you are". We use the same verb in English and therefore need the we/you pronoun; the pronoun is optional in Italian because the verb already carries the we/you meaning. So siamo and sei both translate to 'are', but one is for 'we', and one is for 'you'.
I'm very confused because in some sentences for example "they are women" the traduction is Sono Donne but in another one it says "They are boys" and the traduction is Loro sono ragazzi so my question is Why sometimes the pronom doesn't appear even when the meaning of both sentences say the same?
Subject pronouns are optional because the conjugation of the verb indicates who does what. "Loro sono donne" and "sono donne" mean the same thing. This would be pretty confusing in English because "(we) are women" and "(you) are women" would look the same... but in Italian we and you have different conjugations.
Masculine ending in -o changes to -i. Thus ragazzo becomes ragazzi. If so, shouldn't uomo become uomi? Please guide.
These are called "exceptions". The larger guideline is o - i (masculine) and a - e (feminine), but some change the endings completely. Sometimes it's not a matter of rule, but to learn by heart.
Not all the italian words have the accent on the penultimate syllable (paroxytone words), although most do so. There are also words with the accent on the last syllable (oxytone words) and words with the accent on the third to last syllable (proparoxytone), such as "uomini".
Actually, you may even encounter words with the stress on the fourth from last syllable...we call them "bisdrucciole", but they are very rare.
La traduzione è giusta; ma la pronuncia è sbagliata. Si sente una "l" prima della parola uomini che l'esatto plurale di uomo.
I believe the plural of "uomo" is irregular (uomini) because this word comes from the Latin "homo" (whose plural is "hominis"); if the Italian is based on Latin, it isn't none surprise. (If in this text anything be wrong, correct me because I'm Brazilian, I speak Portuguese.
"Human beings" in Italian is actually "essere umani." So "we are human beings" would translate to "siamo essere umani."
it is easy. It is like in English. If you use the article you are referring to some specific people (the men, those men). If you say only "men" you are talking about all male human beings.
that's what I put too. Confused because I got "Siamo Uomini" right with "we are men", so thought that "Noi siamo Uomini" would be the opposite?
No. -Siamo uomini- and - Noi siamo uomini- have the same meaning. The subject (-Noi-) is implicitly assumed. It is not mandatory to write the subject pronoun in an italian sentence, unless you want to give some particular effect. They slighlty differ only in conversation if you want to underline something...
"Noi siamo uomini" and "Siamo uomini" can both mean "we are men". The reason you can leave off the "Noi" which translates to "we" is because siamo translates to "(we) are".
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@ticolaw Oh, I do that all the time. "noi" means "we" but I often mistake it for "non" which is "not". I think you may have done the same thing. It's a pitfall of the two words appearing alike at first glance and also that Italian doesn't usually have personal pronouns.
That's not unusual at the beginning. You'll get used to it in time. Try listening several times and use the slow version too. "uomo" is a particularly strange word, anyway. Also on other sentences very often there is a voice over for more practice. See here for some tips and very good Guidelines which you should keep handy.
