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- "Più di uno su cinque è senz'…
11 Comments
No explanation: one in five = uno/a su cinque. Cheer up, how do you think people struggling with two foreign languages at a time are doing? In this case both Italian and English are foreign languages. They have to understand what "su" means and then find the right translation in English. I never told anybody that learning a language is easy. It is time consuming, often tedious but most of all it is fun because you will get a different view on how to say things and will be able to communicate in another language.
Absolutely! You end up learning much more than a list of new words and grammar rules :)
20
Sigh. OK, why "su", in "Più di uno su cinque"? Why is it there are fourteen different ways to say in, but "in" or "nel" aren't good enough?
I think of this like a fraction where there is the number one, then a line, both the number and the line "over" (su) the number five...and voilà! You have the fraction 1/5th. More than one fifth of the world is without water...sad, but true.
This is actually true! And there's plenty of good organizations out there working for giving people access to clean water. You should check them out if you want to participate!
Why do they use "è" to mean "are." Since it's "one is without water," shouldn't it be "one in five is without water?" I don't see what a prepositional phrase would change the verb form. Very confusing.
- 829
"One (out) of five", or "one fifth", or "one in five" can be taken to have the same meaning (subject to context). So the English translation isn't strictly literal in this case.
"Uno di cinque" could be another way of saying it, although a native speaker could tell you which is the commonly used approach.
