"Voglio gli stivali rossi, non quelli neri."
Translation:I want the red boots, not those black ones.
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Shouldn't we be able to say "not the black", without the "ones"? (Especially if that's improper English, as I was taught?)
I thought it was impolite in a store to use voglio; instead one should use vorrei. Why doesn't that apply here?
http://www.wordreference.com/iten/vorrei
http://www.rocketlanguages.com/your-community/italian-vocab/voglio-vorrei/
When I asked our exchange student she replied that it is in the tone and it can be taken as rude to use voglio, especially around people you don't know that well...
Then she told me of an old Italian proverb: l erba voglio cresce solo nel giardino del re! I read the story and got the gist... http://chimera.roma1.infn.it/GIORGIO/favole/erba_voglio.html
Because to use different forms of "gli" it's the word that immediately follows it that matters, which isn't always the one it refers to. So in this example, though you refer to "quegli stivali" you really say "quelli neri" because (those black ones) is what's being translated. And "neri" doesn't begin with a Z or an S+ consonant. Hope you understand now :)
Are you a native speaker? Or perhaps Duolingo admin? If the sentence referred to plural feminine noun would it be quelle nere. I find the explanations in this programme wanting. Also the examples/ tests should cover all the combinations of different nouns - masculine / feminine, singular/ plural, vowel and consonants. There are so many inconsistencies.