"We roast some potatoes."
Translation:Arrostiamo qualche patata.
28 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
"Qualche" needs a singular; it could have been "Arrostiamo delle patate" though.
And I'm pleased to reply that I answered "Arrostiamo delle patate" and it was indeed accepted straight away :)
1354
Is there any different in the connotation between the two or is it strictly preference?
Well, the partitive doesn't carry strong quantity implications, and it's often even omitted, while "alcune" would focus more on quantity; if there's a difference it's very slight though, and I think that qualche is the most common.
We = Noi
we roast = arrostiamo
some = qualche / alcuni / dei
potatoes = patate
There are several ways to translate "some" and the invariable qualche (qual+che) is the most commonly used, - but it requires the following noun to be in singular, i.e. qualche patata.
"Arrostiamo qualche patata."
Or we can use alcuni, - but then we have to mach the gender, i.e. alcune patate.
Arrostiamo alcune patate.
Finally we can use "di + article" to express the indefinite quantity, i.e. delle patate.
Arrostiamo delle patate.
Very confusing. We are translating 'potatoes' from English to Italian. Potatoes is plural. How does plural translate to single?
It's just a quirk, after qualche it's always in singular form in Italian, but because there are some of them, it's always of a plural thing.
Because it always uses the singular form after qualche. If you used a different 'some' you could use the plural for potatoes.
- 1013
potatoes is plural, as is patate (in my answer). DL market it wrong because I used the plural rather than the singular (patata). The sentence to be tranlated said Potatoes, which I have always understood to be a PLURALITY OF SPUDS. What the heck?
But what did you use for 'some'? If you used 'qualche' that is ALWAYS followed by the singular form of the noun, so qualche patata, but delle patate or alcune patate
The only report matching the time of your post was "arrostisiamo alcune patate" so if that's yours the problem wasn't "alcune patate".
- 1354
If you check out gailemow's thread at the top of the discussion page, you'll see some discourse about that very question. In summary: if you're using "qualche", it is ALWAYS followed by a singular noun. Also, Marninger's comment give a good quick breakdown of a few different ways you could say this.
"Arrostiamo delle patate" - accepted.
DL sentence is just how Italians express this thought, this is not word for word translation. The languages differ in many aspects
Copy/paste your whole sentence
Otherwise we cannot help.
"Arrostiamo delle patate" was accepted for me.
