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- Topic: Italian >
- "The men drink beer."
"The men drink beer."
Translation:Gli uomini bevono birra.
15 Comments
can someone please explain the difference between I ragazzi and gli uomini? Why do I use i on the first and gli on the second case? thank you.
You use gli before a word with a vowel I think it has to be masculine word too but you will have to check that out
It is like English, when you use the "a" and "an"...."a" when is following a consonant and "an" when is following a vowel. " an apple" ... " a car"...same thing here.
Is beer a mass noun in Italian like in English? That is - can it be plural "i birre"?
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I wrote "birre" instead of "birra". In the english sentence the amount of beer being drunk is not specified, but it seems unlikely that it is just one beer. Does the word "birra" in italian imply that the men were only drinking one beer?
if it's an unknown amount of something you would use del. For this instance, the plural for birra is birre; it then becomes del + le delle birre which would mean an unknown about of beer as far as I understand it
I'm pretty sure you are thinking of l'uomo which is singular. Gli uomini is plural.
From what I can tell, l'uomo is the same as saying il uomo but you partially merge them together because uomo starts with a vowel; il uomo turns into l'uomo. I is a pluralized il but because of the vowel u in uomo you have to use gli (pronounced like the name Lee). Uomini is the plural form of uomo. Hope this helps you!
What about gl'uomini? When you speak, it does elide, yes? Is it just that you would never write it this way?
Nope it's not written anywhere like gl'uomini. I don't know why it doesn't do that; it would make sense because the beginning of the next word begins with a vowel. I suppose the best answer is that it just one of those rules in Italian!
