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- Topic: Italian >
- "Io ne conosco qualcuna così."
29 Comments
What does "ne" mean in this sentence; it doesn't seem to be in the translation. Also: how can "qualcuna" be translated as "some" - isn't it singular?
In this case it's probably "of them", but you wouldn't guess without context: "La mia ragazza ama il calcio" "Ne conosco qualcuna così" ("My girlfriend loves football" "I know some [girls] like that"). "Qualcuna" isn't singular because it's the contraction of qualche+una (compare some+one = someone): "qualche" always needs a singular after it, but the meaning is some, a few.
1) "Qualcuna" IS singular because it's the contraction of qualche+una and una IS singular 2) I would prefer to see "someone like her" instead of "some like that"
I'm following most of this, thank you. But in a previous example "qualcuna" was translated "someone" - "qualcuna sa che ora e'?" It doesn't always have to mean someone?
Actually, "qualcuna sa che ora è?" would be extremely rare in Italian; the masculine is used even when addressing a group of girls, unless there's a partitive, like "qualcuna di voi", or the "ne" in this sentence. In such cases, though, you'd say "some of you" or "some of them", rather than "someone of you" and "someone of them", right? If the sentence had been "Io conosco qualcuna così" (although "Io conosco qualcuno così" would be much more common, even when speaking of a woman), the translation would have been "I know someone like that".
Fernando, thanks for the explaination. I'm still cofused about "ne," though. Apparently, by equating "ne" and "non" as "neither/nor" in English as an attempt to understand, I have led myself astray. Aiute, per favor? Grazie.
The one correlating with "non" (or with itself) to form "neither/nor" is né (ni in French as you're studying it): ne (en in French) instead is a clitic pronoun with a number of uses. Typically, it's a partitive (of it, of them), but sometimes it can express departure (i.e. from there) and sometimes it just forms pronominal verbs, i.e. it forms a new verb meaning. In English you don't always specify, e.g. "I have one" implies "of X": in Italian you have to (e.g. "ne ho uno").
The point is that one is expected to translate a puzzling sentence, with no context, into a form of English that would never be spoken by a native speaker. Any attempt to produce something that sounds like real English is marked wrong. Very frustating.
So I guess a literal translation would be "I know some of them like this" but in English we would say "I know people like this"
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Ne = of them......Qualcuna = some, someone, anybody.......Così = so, like this, just like that, thus.........I know some (of them) like this.
(American English speaker) In English we would either say "I know some like this" or "I know some of them" (which would be a different sentence in Italian)
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I think "I know a few like this" should be accepted as well. Duolingo has different standards as far as accepting related translations.
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I know someone like her - DL didn't like it, but is it definitely wrong? Just wondering....
Does qualcuna always refer to a person? I tried "something like that", but that was wrong.
