"The boys come from Italy."

Translation: Pueri ab Italia veniunt.

[NishthaM2004]

Can someone pls tell me when to use 'a' and when to use 'ab'? I'd be very thankful!

[J.C.M.H.]

A before a consonant; ab before a vowel (or an h, if I am not wrong).

[NikkiHovla]

They follow rules similar to a/an in English. 'a' is used when the following word begins with a consonant and 'ab' is used when the following word begins with a vowel or h.

[J.C.M.H.]

Il Volo?

[linguistkris]

False positive: Pueri ab Italiam veriunt.

[PERCE_NEIGE]

They can't do anything about false positive, only the Duo sofware programmers can.

[Martin358481]

That is just true negative, aka typo(s).

[MichaelG.845143]

Interestingly, 'Pueri ex Italia veniunt' is not accepted.
If you google 'Italia veniunt' the 'ex Italia' hits outnumber 'ab Italia' by far.

[winuphe]

'ex italia' is more like you visited italy . 'ab Italia' means you're italian(like in that sense 'i come from italy')

[MichaelG.845143]

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.