"The people look."
Translation:Le persone guardano.
32 Comments
157
How is it that "the people" is singular, if you use la genta? There is still more than one person performing the verb, so I'd always expect the "-ano" suffix.
Collective nouns conjugate differently in the two languages; in English "look" is conjugated by meaning, and it's plural because more people are looking, while in Italian "guarda" is conjugated grammatically, because "la gente" is singular, regardless of meaning.
It must be like "The group" or "The crowd' in english, which is the same as he/she. He looks, the group looks, etc.
Same here, it's strange, because when i hover over people, the first thing it says is gente
According to my 1 1/2 inch thick Webster's New World Italian Dictionary, 'gente' translates to … wait for it … 'people.' Hmmm...
Why is 'i popoli guardano' incorrect? I sense there must be a difference between popoli and persone and gente, but I don't know what that would be.
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Can any one explain the difference between la genta and la persona? I keep getting it all wrong.
Since 'la gente' is technically singular 'guardare' is conjugated as as 'guarda'
In the peculiarities of the language, 'gente' is a singular noun. It refers to the singular group, not the lot of individuals within it. That being the case, it does happen to be feminine, so it is 'la gente.' And also, being singular, the verb has to be singular too, hence 'guarda' ('guarda' being the feminine singular verb). Hope this clears it up. This is one you just have to remember, and not directly try to equate it to English. Not to confuse you, but 'le personne' is plural (referring to many people as opposed to a singular group), so it would take the plural verb 'guardano.'
So, 'le gente guardano' is not acceptable. Le gente being a singular group of people, so we are not referring to many groups of people or peoples. So, someone needs to explain why my answer was unacceptable when 'le persone' was.
Because 'gente' and 'persone' are different words. A peculiarity of the Italian language is that 'gente' refers to a singular group of people but 'persone' refers to multiple people, hence it is plural.
When would you use gente, popolo and persone, they all seem to mean people..
In English there is contention about the form of the verb following collective nouns. Some would say "The Goverment say...." others "The Goverment says....." I don't know which is strictly correct.
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In Britain, they would say "the Government say" (i.e. THEY say), whereas in America it is more common to say "the Government says" (IT says). Duolingo has marked many of my ENGLISH translations wrong because I used British grammar. I have reported this, but they haven't changed it, so I have had to remember to use US grammar here. :-(
- 2036
The government says. Because "government" is singular. PS: Remember the "n" in government. ;-)
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This translation makes it appear literally as "the people, it looks" while using guardano it is more like "the people, they look" which sounds more natural? Is popolo always singular then, even though it's describing a group?
"Guarda" here is FALSE FRIEND of "Guard" in English. "Guarda" (Guardare?) here means "to look".
"To look" in this context is DIFFERENT FROM "To see" according to DL.
How about "la gente cerca" since we don’t know what the 'looking' is about. Thanks
I'm not sure that would work. I think 'cercare' means 'to look for' whereas 'guardare' means 'to look.'
