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- "Today the new national measu…
"Today the new national measures are in the newspaper."
Translation:Oggi le nuove misure nazionali sono sul giornale.
58 Comments
I'm confused. Le misure is clearly feminine plural, so why is it nazionali and not nazionale?
There are many words ending in -e in the singular: they're all gender invariant and have a plural in -i, e.g. "la carne", "le carni" (meat).
Ah, thank you. Gender invariance is not easy to pick up in a learning method like this!
1461
However I just saw in another exercise that the feminine singular form of this adjective is internazionale, ending with an -e. "Siamo una famiglia internazionale". So maybe adjectives work the same way as the noun in f.formica's example, some of them have special endings.
"Siamo una famiglia internazionale" in your example is talking about a SINGLE family. Internazionale is the singular adjective. For mascule and feminine it is both (inter)nazionale. It always end with "e" so the plural always ends with "i". I hope it helped!
Yes, actually formica was explaining why the adjective "nazionale" (sing.) ended with an -i in the plural form and not with an -e.
Maybe he shouldn't have exemplified his explanation with a noun because it got you confused, but what he said applies also to adjectives.
No you aren't stupid it is descriptive of the measures. But since measures is plural then international becomes plural as well. Hope this helps.
- 469
But then, why is nuove not nuovi here? Is it somehow due to its placement before the noun misure?
- 1468
The word "misure" (measures) is feminine and plural. So adjectives that describe it must also be in the feminine plural form. The Italian word for "new" is "nuovo." It has four forms: "nuovo" (masculine singular), "nuova" (feminine singular), "nuovi" (masculine plural), and "nuove" (feminine plural. So, "nuove" must be used to describe "misure."
The Italian word for "national" has only two forms. Both are independent of gender: "nazionale" (singular masculine and feminine) and "nazionali" (plural masculine and feminine).
As you can see, The last letters of a noun and its adjective may not always be the same.
Why does "nuove" precedes the noun and "nazionali" doesn't? Shouldn't all adjectives in Italian follow the noun?
Not all of them: http://italian.about.com/library/fare/blfare129a.htm
There are even several that can both precede and follow, sometimes changing meaning depending on where they're placed: www.arnix.it/free-italian/italian-grammar/adjectives-in-italian-the-position.php
Thanks, that was extremely helpful, although confusing, because now I have to memorize those that precede the object...
What happens if you have two adjectives that are normally both supposed to follow a noun? (A tall, black dog). Do you just place them both after the noun anyway (Un cane alto nero)?
It depends; in speech it would probably be "un cane alto, nero," or "un cane alto e nero", but "un alto cane nero" might work better in a novel, for instance. "Un nero cane alto" wouldn't work though.
Someone on here said that newspapers used to be only one page, so in that sense there was nothing IN the newspaper; the words were printed ON the paper instead. The preposition just stuck even after the meaning stopped making sense. Kind of like how we still say that we "roll UP the windows" in a car, even though car windows are automatic now and don't really roll "up", in that sense, or how we say we saw an actor ON a show or IN that movie. They're just little idiosyncrasies of the culture that probably have some out-of-date cultural root that was never changed. That's what I heard, anyway.
Aggh! Prepositions are tricky and really hard to remember - for me. I dread them coming in twos and threes in Italian, with letters shaved-off the end and in between two of them. They will probably drive me right around the bend and up the wall.
- 469
A little girl i know was confounded when her grandmother asked her to "hang up the phone." Her request was followed by scratching noises, followed by a plea...!
With "del" it would say "Today the new national measures are of the newspaper"
- 361
A 'measure' is a plan or agenda of the government. For example, 'We have to take measures against crime.' It doesn't have to do with finding the length or weight of something. 'National measures' would be some kind of policy that will be applied across the whole country. So, for example, there might be 'national measures' to reduce pollution, which every part of the country would be obliged to accept and implement. And since the measures would affect everybody in the country, it would make sense to publish them in then newspapers.
I know in French, there's certain adjectives that go before a joun (BAGS); is the same true for Italian?
- 1468
Yes, there is a mnemonic that tells what kind of adjectives precede an Italian noun. It is BAGS. Those are the initials of the four attributes of the adjectives: Beauty (e.g. bello, brutto); Age (e.g. giovane, vecchio); Goodness (e.g. buono, cattivo); and Size (e.g. piccolo, grande). These adjectives usually precede a noun, but also may follow a noun. There are exceptions to the rule, but it usually works.
Because they are talking about a newspaper, not something else that happens daily.
I'm not native, and I see an inconsistence in these frase, "Oggi le nuove misure nazionali sono sul giornale", just one newspaper, why not newspapers, and in Italian frase, why not "giornali"
A useless challenge to test what? Why does this keep appearing? Change it up to make it interesting and applicable, prego.
Copied one of the super helpful links someone else posted: http://www.arnix.it/free-italian/italian-grammar/adjectives-in-italian-the-position.php
"In practice, when we need to give more emphasis to the adjective, we place it after the noun. If the adjective is placed before the noun, we are giving greater emphasis to the noun.
Una grande pizza (A + N)An amazing pizza
Una pizza grande (N + A)A large pizza"
With pizza, everything makes more sense...
