"The police officers have blue shirts."
Translation:I poliziotti hanno le camicie azzurre.
33 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Why is "i poliziotti hanno camicie azzurre" wrong? The English sentence says "blue shirts" and not "the blue shirts."
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.
Camicie is the shirt with buttons, like the you put under a suit and maglie is a t-shirt
One answer says le camicie one answer says delle camicie, and based on other sentences I didn't think any article was necessary. Help?
997
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.
delle is literally "of the", but the construction is no longer considered definite. It is, as you said, "some", which is the partitive.
- 997
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.
When the shade of blue is not specified (& you can't see it) what is wrong with using blu? Sometimes I realky believe Duolingo does this deliberately to lose us points!
"Blu" is fine here and Duolingo is just wrong to suggest otherwise
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?
Why is "le camicie azzurre" the correct answer? Duolingo is really inconsistent when it comes to whether having the definite article in the answer is correct.
" 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 "le poliziotte hanno le camicie azzure." is wrong? They presumably could all be women I guess?
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.
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.
No, that is not how the verb conjugates. "Avere" is irregular.
https://www.italian-verbs.com/italian-verbs/conjugation.php?parola=avere
Thank you very much for the quick response. I thought they were different verbs with the same meaning and slighty different usage.
Probably the wrong shade. Different color words generally indicate different actual colors. We tend to use "blue" indiscriminately to refer to that whole part of the color spectrum, but there are other named colors within it (depending on which language you speak).
I wrote "I poliziotti hanno le camice azzurre". In my opinion it is the same as the correct translation, but I got the info that it is incorrect (more then 10 times...). Could you tell me if my translation is correct? If my translation is correct, is anyone else who has/had the same problem?
