- Forum >
- Topic: Italian >
- "Ho chiamato le mie zie."
51 Comments
Oliviakins: In the US aunt is probably the most common term for the sister of a parent. In most parts of the US it's pronounced to rhyme with 'want', and as a form of address it's quite often lengthened to "auntie", while in the south it's pronounced 'ant' like the pesky little critter we're all familiar with.
That's interesting, because in the US aunt is very casual when talking about your aunt and auntie is really only used by small kids or when addressing your aunt. And I'm pretty sure all English courses on Duo are American-English based, and we would never say "my auntie(s)" to someone, so that's probably why. But it should be accepted.
2701
I agree, put I I called my aunties on Halloween 2014 and it was marked as wrong. I've reported it as should be accepted.
274
It's not slang.. it's slightly informal. It's pretty global when it comes to usage, not sure why you think it's Aussie.
404
Aunties is a correct translation of zie. Aunt and aunts are used more formally at least in Australia. Some of the words and spelling used in Duolingo are particularly American, eg candies.... Sweets or lollies.
2190
Why is the definite article used here? I thought that it was dropped before possessive adjectives when referring to family members.
1294
Why is it "le mie zie"? I thought the rule was that with family it was not correct to use the article "le".
1952
- chiamare (chi amare) = to call (whom to love)
- chi
e
dere = to ask, to de
mand - chi
u
dere = to close, to shu
t
The orig question was: "Are you sure about 'ant'? Would you really call your aunt an insect?" - Your answer as best as could be seen from your answer, was 'yes.' That implied to me you spelled it the way you pronounced it. If that wasn't the case and I misunderstood your answer, then you should have been a bit more specific.
274
Please take a look at your original comment. How would you expect people to extrapolate this particular interpretation from it? The word 'use' doesn't exactly mean 'pronounce'. Besides this thread is not about how the word 'aunt' is pronounced in English, it's about which words are best used to translate 'zia'. So of course, people's default interpretation of your comment would be about the spelling, not pronounciation.
662
If this lesson is going to teach Italian Present Perfect, it would help to be consistent in using the English Present Perfect. Many Americans ignore this tense (I HAVE called) and substitute the simple or 'completed' perfect (I CALLED). The difference is important. If you are accustomed to using English Present Perfect, translating to many European languages is easy because they use the auxiliary verb HAVE in exactly the same way.
The Italian passato prossimo is not used in the same way as the English present perfect. The English use is much more restricted. So while you would use this tense in Italian to translate the English present perfect (in most cases), you would also use it where English would only use the simple past. It's important that people learning the language realize this, which is why the default translations (the ones that show up automatically) vary between present perfect and the simple past. However, unless context would not permit it (for example, a sentence like "I have called them last week" would not work grammatically in English), you should find that the present perfect is accepted as an answer.
1498
there was no apostrophe in my answer to DL. The point is the use of "did call" rather than "called"