"Loro parlano italiano, portoghese, spagnolo, inglese e francese."
Translation:They speak Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, English and French.
42 Comments
It's indeed interesting to follow up comments like those. But after three years, with no current streak, no activity history, and stopped at only level 16 in Italian and level 3 in German... I'd say that either he gave up that dream OR decided that Duo wasn't the place to fulfil it.
I feel your pain. On the one hand it's a high value content sentence, packing a whole bunch of adjectives in. On the other it's so long that by about the 4th time you hit it it's gotten old. Very, VERY old.
Parlo spagnolo, inglese, portoghese ed un po' d'italiano, ma voglio concentrarmi sul norvegese oppure il danese.
1501
I want to be like them. Espero que pronto sea asi. Obrigado Duo. A bientot! :)
As a fun fact I understood obrigado, Mais je peux entredre ce que vous avez dit, questo è grazie a Duolingo. Ich wüsche dir mehr Wissen. Dankon al vi, en doei! Un hablante nativo de español te saluda.
Not fun to have to type this in timed practice. Had two typos and ran out of time :(
English aside, how dare you leave out Romanian from this sisterhood of Romance languages lol
Shakira can speak five languages and you should click on this link to see for yourself.
Where is the clue that this sentence refers to a third person ("they") speaker?
The word "loro" itself. Also the verb form; note the "ano" ending. However it is not "a" third person; it is third person plural. "They" as in "Those people over there". Using "they" for the third person singular is not correct "old school" English; you would have to use he, she or it. However it has become accepted English because English lacks a gender-neutral way of saying it, which is needed if talking about some theoretical third person. (Which is, I think, where your confusion came from.) However with Italian the verb form clearly distinguishes between singular and plural, with or without the pronoun (Loro) which puts it beyond doubt.
Sorry, it's not my best day. I saw loro, but thought sono. (Not sure what I was thinking about parlano -- something about speaking . . . ) Great explanation, though. Thanks.
Don't worry it can happen to any of us. I'd hate to say how many times I've misread "noi" as "non" in Duo questions, partly because "non" was what I was expecting to see because (as is also the case here) the pronoun isn't strictly necessary. Do enough questions in a day and it's easy to start skimming and get caught by "noi" being where you were expecting "non", or "loro" where you were expecting "sono"...
This really annoys me. I typed "They speak italian, portugese, spanish, english and french" and it rejects it. OK. There is a "u" missing. So what why should we care if I type/spell english correctly? I only care about the italian part...
MOST of the time if there is a one character typo in a word, Duo will say that you have a typo and still mark it as correct. (Unless the typo yields another valid word in the target language (in which case Duo has no idea whether it was a typo or a mistake), which would not be the case here.) However it's just a computer algorithm; it can't actually "read" the word. I have no idea why but for some reason the typo (and I'm betting that you aren't the first to make that one and you won't be the last) isn't being detected as such here. If you get hit with it again I'd recommend flagging it and seeing whether the admins can fix it.
The main reason that it's annoying in this case of course is that the question is so annoyingly long to type out the answer to. That makes it even more important that you not get an error for a mere typo.
That's because in English "talk" and "speak" are different verbs and in some contexts have subtly different meanings. Talking generally implies another person or an audience. "Speak" (in THIS context) is the ability to talk in those languages even though you aren't talking at the time.
This sentence is just mean when you're typing on a phone. One wrong letter, forgot the second u in Portuguese! GRRRRRRRR!!!!
