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- Topic: Italian >
- "Molti mangiano poco."
25 Comments
It's not fine word for word though. "Many eat little." sounds very clunky and somewhat unnatural. It might technically be grammatically correct, but you should definitely allow more natural translations as well.
Confused by some of the pronouns? This sentence is fine translated word for word. When you see ne or ci do feel free to ask questions about how the English translation would work ;)
I had the same question (because "mangiano" made me think "they/them" had to be in the translation)
Why not "Many eat a little?" In English you rarely if ever would hear "eat little".
What the hell kind of sentence is this? Is this even used in daily conversational speech?
It is grammatically correct, but "many eat very little" sounds a lot better and would be more likely to be said.
Isn't it more idiomatic to say Many people eat little. I suppose it could be about dogs or horses.
many eat little is not good english. many eat a liitle, or just a little, seems better to me
I've never heard anyone say this. I've heard "Many of them ate a little."
There is nothing with translating this as "Many are eating little" because this is still an accurate translation in the present tense.
I think that has a slightly different meaning to it. Using "a bit" isn't likely to be used for a general statement like "many eat little". Also, "a bit" would be translated into "un po'/chino".
1314
I'm confused because of the 3rd person plural of mangiare. I guess 'molti di loro' would be necessary for 'many of them' but i thought the verb conveys the subject, in this case 'them.' I'm going to try thr word for word 'Many they eat little' and see what happens. 24.12.18
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Really? I say that all the time ... just kidding! I guess one good thing about it is that it teaches one to translate meaningless sentences without guessing what is being said. There are a fair number of those in DL. But hey ... it's free, so I'm not complaining.
