"There is nothing serious."

Translation: Non c'è niente di grave.

[peter2108]

How does one know whether to insert 'di' or not?

[malcolmissimo]

Peter's sensible question should come first, so please vote him up, because unfortunately the dominant discussion here started on completely the wrong track and stayed there. If the authors are still present, they could kindly help future students by altering their contributions.

Niente di [aggettivo] is a very common example of a rather obscure construction called the complemento partitivo. https://italian.stackexchange.com/questions/5710/why-niente-di-nuovo-not-niente-nuovo should help. To learn from it, read the lot, follow the links and understand the other examples, not just niente.

Basically, where English says "nothing new", Italian says the equivalent of "nothing of [the] new". Nothing is being treated (logically) as an empty subset of the whole set of things described by the adjective. You may grasp this more easily if you substitute "something" for "nothing".

[carolfair]

Seria means serious ... why can't seria be used instead of grave?

[German4me22]

Serio was accepted

[Fjbaez]

Not sure about the technical terms, but the adjective is used as a noun. That way, I read it as "There is nothing of seriousness".

[David-1960]

I wrote "C'è niente grave." Which translatea the same. But it was marked wrong

[QHMHUCkF]

Thank you for the first two comments that I came to. The first asking the only question that was raised in my mind and the second answering it! This is not the first time that we have seemingly been expected to just know sentence/phrase construction and I note where they're always positioned (for me at least) in the lesson.

[LotSparham]

DL: This might be a correct and complete sentence in Italian, but it is super-awkward English.

[criscarmi]

I was wondering the same thing, so I did a little research and I believe the use of "di" here falls into the following category: "LOCUZIONI AVVERBIALI are phrases arranged in a fixed order that function as adverbs: all'improvviso, di frequente, per di qua, press'a poco, poco fa, a più non posso, d'ora in poi. Locuzioni avverbiali are numerous and widely used in spoken language, often with regional variations." http://italian.about.com/od/grammar/a/italian-adverbs.htm
If another rule for its use exists please let us know!

[peter2108]

Good. I checked this out in my big grammar book: di botto (suddenly), di certo (for sure), di continuo (continuously), di fresco (recently) di mezzo (in the way) di nascosto (secretly), di nuovo (again), di rado (seldom) di notte (by night), di recente (recently), di sicuro (certainly), di solito (usually),

There are lots with a as well. I liked: a mano a mano (little by little) which is also man mano.

[BillofKempsey]

So adverbial phrases simply have to be learned as they are, with no particular rules as to the form they take. How Italian!

[Lawrence49]

but these are adverbial phrases. "There is nothing serious" is an adjectival phrase. Using your examples, how would one say in Italian "there is nothing fresh" or "there is nothing new"? You surely wouldn't include "di". Wouldn't it be "non c'e niente nuovo"?

[LindaNovelli]

what grammar book do you have?

[peter2108]

My big grammar book is A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian M.Maiden & C. Robustelli Hodder Education 2007.

[LindaNovelli]

grazie.

[Hildegard159905]

What is wrong with 'niente serio'? If that's wrong, then the hints are wrong again.