"The police officers have blue shirts."
Translation:I poliziotti hanno le camicie azzurre.
16 Comments
One answer says le camicie one answer says delle camicie, and based on other sentences I didn't think any article was necessary. Help?
both answers you list have articles (definite) 'le' and the 'le' of 'delle' the difference between them is that the police have only blue shirts (le) with their uniforms while they have some (delle) blue shirts in their entire wardrobe.
1940
delle is literally "of the", but the construction is no longer considered definite. It is, as you said, "some", which is the partitive.
thanks. I didn't want to suggest that 'delle' was a definite article; only that 'le' is as part of the construction 'preposition + definite article" I think I missed MisterSwo's real question anyhow. "non ho gatti" (I don't have cats) as opposed to "non ho i gatti soriani"(I don't have tabby cats). no-article gatti aren't specific cats, they're just cats. le camicie azzurre aren't any old shirts. they are blue uniform shirts.
They won't lock you up for it, but there is quite a difference. Carbinieri essentially are soldiers, MP's, but act in all respects also as civilian policemen. Policemen: polizia stradale, polizia comunale, polizia statale, all of them civilian police. The only times I had to contact the police I went to the carabinieri. They were nice and business like. The general emergency number is -112- which will get you the carabinieri, if you especially want the polizia di stato, you dial -113-. The fire brigade is -115-, ambulance is -118-. As -112- is the general European alarm number you can dial that and the carabinieri will alarm an ambulance or the fire brigade for you. Of course it helps if you speak Italian, so keep up the good work or don't get into trouble.
" poliziotti" is the word for "police officers" if you insist on "agenti" you could say: "agenti di polizia" but "poliziotti" is the prefered word.
Why is "i poliziotti hanno camicie azzurre" wrong? The English sentence says "blue shirts" and not "the blue shirts."
- 1940
English and Italian are different languages with different rules, not merely different words.
If this is anything like "bevo acqua" vs "bevo l'acqua", then it's a matter of being a general statement vs a specific statement. In Italian, the use of the definite article is opposite of how it is in English.
why "le poliziotte hanno le camicie azzure." is wrong? They presumably could all be women I guess?
- 1940
The profession itself is grammatically masculine, just like "la guardia" is grammatically feminine. It has nothing to do with the sex or gender of the individual members. There is no feminine form of the word.
You use ‘la camicia’ interchangeably for a shirt, a jersey and a jumper. If one cannot guess what you are going to say is the right answer it is marked wrong. What are you going to translate it as next?
