"Where is the furniture?"
Translation:Dove sono i mobili?
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The italian is structured as "where are the furnishings," or "where are they the furnishings." It helps to remember, in italian, furniture is always "furnishings" unless refering to a single piece of furniture: mobile.
It's not first person singular here, it's third person plural, as you can see "i mobili" is plural.
From what I've pieced together "the furniture" (singular) in English is "i mobili" (plural) in Italian. "Piece of furniture" translates into "il mobile" (singular) in Italian.
the meaning for mobili is furnishings, NOT furniture.....unless they want one piece, then it is mobile
i think there are two things (1) note in italiano furniture is rmobile or i mobili but generally refered as plural
and
(2) where is one item vs where are multiple items
As one person put it, whenever it says just furniture, use i mobili and only use il mobile to say a PIECE of furniture.
I used it as a plural in a previous exercise and lost a heart. I just don't get it anymore.
my answer was : "dov'è il mobile" considered as wrong. DL wants this sentence : "Dove sono i mobili?" But the english sentence is "where is" (singular) and not "Where are" (plural) So, I think tant the good answer was mine...
sorry, but no -your answer was not good. english isn't the standard by which you measure other languages. in italian, you'd say 'i mobili' when referring to furniture, so it would always be plural, unless you were specifically referring to a PIECE of furniture, which would translate to 'il mobile'. you can't always have word-for-word translation because the same things can be thought of differently in different languages. you just have to learn the norms of the new language. this is like arguing that 'quanti anni hai' makes no sense simply because the literal translation is 'how many years do you have'. instead you learn that in English you 'ARE' x years and in italian you 'HAVE' x years.
mobili = furnishings, NOT furniture........mobile = a piece of furniture
I though "sono" means "are",so why is the word "soon" being used as "is" in this sentence?
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Dove is where, Dov'è is where is. The e on Dove is dropped because of the word following it.
I mobili è al plurale quindi giustamente ho scritto dov'è il mobile? altrimenti sarebbe : fornitures
It helps to consider the italian structure as "Where are they the furnishings?" Mobili tranzlates more literally as furnishings. That then informs the rest of the phrasing.
Can someone please explain to me that why the sentence is singular and translation is plural ?
An entire sentence cannot be singular or plural, only a noun.
In English, we use the singular word "furniture" as a mass noun to refer to multiple pieces of furniture, or the general concept of furniture. It's like "clothing" refers to multiple articles of clothing, or the general concept of clothes.
In Italian, they don't use that word as a mass noun, and so they use the singular for one piece of furniture and the plural for more than one.
Different languages, different ways of saying things. They don't line up one-to-one. You don't just neatly swap out words.
Yes, in English it's singular and in Italian it's plural. Languages are not one-to-one. They say things differently.
Because in Italian they use the plural "i mobili", roughly "the pieces of furniture".
This is the fourth time you've asked. I'm not answering you again. Please read the other comments on this page, and please read my responses to you.
- 702
"Furniture" is singular in English. There is no plural...you can say "pieces of furniture".
That hurt my head. So many irregularities to recall! Singular vs plural etc
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Where is the furniture refers to just one pices of furniture. So * dov e il mobile* is true
Furniture is a singular noun. We say where is the furniture not furnitures.