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- "Their elephant drinks milk."
"Their elephant drinks milk."
Translation:Il loro elefante beve il latte.
54 Comments
213
with the article it's a special milk, without it's milk in general. Very likely they've mixed it up here..
From what I have figured out:
Il loro, I loro, La loro, Le loro = Their
Loro sono = They ("Loro" used when dealing with people only)
Sono = "They" when dealing with anything other than people
I think my head is going to explode!
Chuck, sono is first person singular and third person plural conjugation for the verb essere
http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/Italian/essere.html
so:
io sono l'uomo = I am the man
loro sono gli uomini = they are the men
hope that helps
Cool, thanks :)
My examples were for when "sono" is used for "They are". You apparently drop the "Loro" in that situation. At least that is what I understood so far, from a previous question.
I should have made that clear, oops :)
No problem. Yes, the personal pronoun as a subject is usually omitted. In fact, my two examples, to be accurate, should actually be 'sono l'uomo' and 'sono gli uomini', and as you can see, it is possible to determine whether the personal pronoun is singular or plural based on the rest of the sentence, this is often the case.
See the link I posted below that shows what the rules are for omitting the article. In general, it is omitted when it refers to a singular family relationship, like my mother, or your father, or her husband, etcetera. So it is quite likely that perhaps you had a sentence like:
Your mother cuts garlic = tua madre taglia l'aglio
in the current sentence then the article is required. ;-)
In Italian, the article is most often used than not, even when in English it is dropped to make a general statement. You can see this page for the rules about dropping articles when referring to singular family members.
http://www.arnix.it/free-italian/italian-grammar/possessive-adjectives-in-italian.php
Why sometimes is the definite article (the) inclluded and sometimes not? eg. Il loro elefante beve latte ( their elephant drinks milk) and then Bevo caffe ( I drink coffee). Both sentences refer to the item drunk in general terms.No capisco!