44 Comments
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
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.)
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.
17
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.
Am i the only one that sings ill make a man out of you when this sows up? Yes T.T
