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- Topic: Italian >
- "Né leggo né scrivo."
109 Comments
373
I put Ned, Ned, I still got credit but was corrected for Ne instead. I heard it in the standard speed and typed it out and then I was like let me check again, I listened at normal speed again and hear Ne, but the slower pronunciation was Ned.
Only if you put a negative elsewhere in the sentence, e.g. I don't read or write. You can put double negatives in Italian but not in English so in a sentence like 'Non voglio né tè né caffè' there are two ways to translate it: 1) I want neither tea nor coffee 2) I don't want either tea or coffee. (P.S. Italian speakers, please correct the sentence above if it's wrong!)
144
you are right and you should report it... after a while they notice. use the report button
300
Although the general meaning is the same I think here they are really trying to teach us the 'neither...nor' construction.
I heard "ned". But having a modest background in linguistics, I wonder if the [t] or [d] that English speakers might think we hear is a phenomenon that also occurs in English. That is, when we say "cat" or "bat" we are not actually saying the [t], but we hear the [t] (a final 'stop': an 'unreleased' stop I think, you can look it up if interested)-- our brains fill the [t] in because we know the sound is "supposed" to be there. Anyway, the words we have in English that start with NEH are ned and net -- so I guess we need to be wary of our brains filling in sounds for us in other languages.
Né is always negative. If you were to say: "I neither read nor write." Or "I do not either read or write." , they are both proper sentances. They mean the same thing even though one says "either...or" and the other says "neither...nor". Né would never mean "I either read or write." It must always be negative. Hope this helps:-D.
And the reason that you say that in Texas - or in any other native English-speaking land - is that "...nor write" is actually an incomplete clause which has within it "do I", so that it looks like this when complete: "I do not read, nor do I write." That is not a double negative, because each clause has a single negative in it.
I'm not a native English speaker so I'm not sure, but isn't neither-nor a redundancy? in French and Spanish we consider those double negatives as the correct form, but I thought it was wrong in English. Shouldn't it be "I can neither read or write" or "I can't read or write"? Is "nor" the preferred term?
This is special because neither and nor only negate one item each, if there are more items, you will have to continue to provide more "nor" for each more item. This form is especially used for listed items. I like neither fish, nor chicken, nor vegetables, nor meat. I like either ice cream or cookies or cake. I neither swim nor ride bicycles nor run, so I guess I won't be doing the triathlon.
Also, if you use "not" you will negate the entire sentence and then you could use "either ...or" with your list and the items would still be negated. I do not like either fish or clams. "either..or..." can be used with "not".
"neither...nor..." is considered a single negative for lists.
To top it off, "Neither" can be used alone, in a second negative statement answering some else's. "One person says "I don't like that." Other person says "Neither do I." showing that they have a similar dislike.
"Nor" can be used to start a second negative clause. "I don't like the way he did that, nor do I appreciate the way he pretended that it didn't matter." In retrospect, the person could say "I neither liked the way he did that nor the way he pretended that it didn't matter.", but when speaking on the fly he may have come up with the first thought and then added the second and it is perfectly correct to do so. http://robin.hubpages.com/hub/Grammar_Mishaps__Neither-Nor_and_Either-Or
Got it! Thanks. It is similar in Spanish, where you have the form "No leo ni escribo" Where "no" only negates the first term, and then "ni" is a contraction of "y no" (and I don't/and it is not"/etc.) so the literal translation could look like I don't read and I don't write and I don't... Anyway, now it makes sense.
Has it been corrected, because it sounds fine to me. Here is an alternate site to listen to pronunciation: http://www.forvo.com/search-it/n%c3%a9%20n%c3%a9/
It sounds correct to me, perhaps it has been fixed. Also you can listen to this site for pronunciation: http://www.forvo.com/search-it/n%c3%a9%20n%c3%a9/
1323
Accent acute: né, sé (da sé = hiself): open pronunciation Accent serious (grave in italian): è (verbo essere), caffè, bebè or farò, potrò. Closed pronunciation. Only on the last vocal (not like French !). The difference is very small (many italians do not know this, so don't worry !). If the final vocal is a, i, u, only accent serious (grave) : libertà
476
The female voice says in the turtle mode: Ned ..... ned... instead of "né" and how I see in the other comments, she says that since three years without any improvement. It is a little bit long for a mistake. I have reported it once again.
I'm assuming you're referring to the first person pronoun? I think in general its not necessary as the verb conjugation will already give the information that it is first person. Beyond this it is mostly used for emphasis. For example if you were traveling with an Italian native and a shopkeeper referred to both of you as Italians you could respond ''IO non sono italiano''.
This is obviously not exhaustive as there are many uses for Io, but for beginners and for the usage before a verb, it's generally just emphatic.
528
Please an explanation: why was it NON mangiamo NE pollo NE pesce, that is with twoo Ne scrivo with only one negation? negations, but NE keg
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Hm — in "Non è né tè né caffè nero" the "Non" was compulsory. Here it is left our. Why the difference?
It depends on where you are placing the negative word ("né" here). If it is before the verb, you don't need "non," but if it is after, you need it. The same applies to other negative words, like "nessuno" or "mai."
Non ho né caffè né caffè. ("Né" is after the verb "ho.")
Né parlo né gioco. ("Né" is before the verb "parlo.")
Nessuno è qui. ("Nessuno" is before the verb "è.")
Non c'è nessuno. ("Nessuno" is after the verb "è.")
I'm going to reason that those sentences are also very different in English; in your first, "There isn't any tea or black coffee," you need the "non" to modify the verb: "there is NOT...". In the exercise here, there is no "not" part of the sentence, it is merely "I neither read nor write". However, if you said "there is no book nor newspaper", you would need "non" again.
390
Good and pragmatic way to tackle it.
However, since in Italian the same negation is used in both cases («né – né»), I would prefer to translate them using one and the same English expression; «I neither read nor write» and «it is neither tea nor black coffee». No need for «not» then …
ah, but "it is neither tea nor coffee" is a different sentence than "There is no coffee or tea". I'm going to bet the lesson was the latter, rather than the former (in that case, really, " Non c'e'...", but I was merely quoting the question asked; that first sentence is only useful to you if you are regularly doing blind taste tests!