Both words in both languages derive from Latin, respectively vestitus (past participle of vestio, to dress: clothed, dressed, but also cover and clothing) and habitus (past participle of habeo, "to have": retained, maintained, but also habit or disposition). So as you can see, "vestito" comes closer to the original meaning; in modern Italian there is no distinction in meaning though.

This should help: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/italian/language_notes/il.html

as far as I understand, 'Gli' is used before nouns beginning with a vowel, g, sc or gn. Otherwise it's 'i'

I was wondering if anyone else thought of Barney Stinson.

It could mean clothing too. In the singular, "abito" is usually a suit, but in the plural it acquires a more generic meaning; the plural of abito is still abiti though.

It's accepting “They're my clothes“.

Yeah, I keep doing that and finding the translation I know isn't there. I report it when it happens.

You would have to specify "io" in that case: "io sono i miei abiti" If the subject is omitted, people will naturally assume you mean the mostly likely interpretation (which is "They are my suits/clothes")

Whether or not "io sono i miei abiti" has a similiar idiomatic meaning to the English idiom "Clothing makes the man" - that I don't know. (Probably not though because idioms are usually language specific) ...but it's a valid sentence even if it's a nonsensical one.

I did that also since another example was such, although unusual.

Edit: apparently the woman - vestito and man - abito connection is not always the case, because I understand that, for example, to refer to a woman's gown at a, say, formal ceremony you would use "abito". Not "vestito". The abito - formal, vestito - less formal connection seems to be accurare though.

What sort of suit? "Costume" is typically used for bathing suits, but no other suit comes to mind. If it's a regionalism, I've never heard of it.

Same

"They" does not always refer to people or animals. It is also used for inanimate things. "Those" adds additional meaning which is not present in the context of the sentence from Duolingo, but could be correct.

I'd advise you to learn the accents as you go instead of trying to find a rule: making sense of it requires a good knowledge of phonology and philology, and that's besides the point of learning the language.

In Latin the rule is rather easy: if the second-to-last vowel is long it carries the stress, otherwise it falls on the third-to-last. The problem is figuring out when a vowel is short or long as classical Latin didn't use diacritics. In "habitus" A was long while I and U were short, hence the stress fell back on the A.

Italian obviously carried over most of the pronunciation from Latin, but words changed without changing stress (e.g. from vírtus - virtútem - virtù), new words were formed or imported from other languages, and some spelling conventions like attached clitics can increase the number of syllables in a word without changing its original stress.

I reported it. 10/20/2016

You're right, it is. Vestiti would be suits, as even my Italian born, Italian teacher said

"That is" is correct, because "that," which is singular, is the subject of the sentence, which must agree with the verb (singular "is"). "That is my clothes" is rather awkward, though, and best avoided.

"i" the the plural of "il", like "le" is the plural of "la", and "gli" is the plural of "lo". Italian generally keeps the articles (il, la, lo, i, le, gli) when English would omit them. They would say "i miei abiti, le mie maglie, etc." where English would just say, "my suits", "my sweaters", and NOT "the my suits", "the my sweaters". So for a clear English translation, you can leave out translating the "i". But you need to include it when speaking / writing Italian.

"i miei abiti" is plural = my suits. "il mio abito" = my suit. So it has to be "they are". "Sono" = "They are"

Yes. (Suits - plural - actually.) And in English, the word "suit" can be:

• a set of business clothing (pants or skirt, plus jacket, and sometimes a vest)

• the clothing you wear to go swimming

• all the cards in a deck that depict hearts (or spades, clubs, or diamonds)

• a verb meaning "to please" or "to satisfy" ("That suits me.)

• a legal term for a court process ("He filed suit against the company.")

and a few other things besides.

Isn't language grand? ;-)

Coats are only one type of clothing. http://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung?q=abiti&l=enit&in=&lf=it

"They are my suits," "Those are my suits," and "These are my suits" are all grammatically correct in English. "These" is used to refer to something right here. "Those" refers to something away from you, over there, out of sight, and so on. I can't speak for the accuracy of the translation from Italian, however. [US English native speaker]

See jessic's comment above. I asked the same question and got a good answer.

Here's why in detail. Sono is the "they" form of essere as well as the "I" form. Since this isn't referring to yourself, it'd be "they" usage