"Noi non ci siamo visti da mercoledì."
Translation:We have not seen each other since Wednesday.
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713
Ah, "each other"! I translated this as "We have not seen ourselves since Wednesday". It didn't occur to me until too late that "ci" could mean "each other". Another tricky multiple meaning to stow away in the brain...
I translated this correctly from Italian to English, but wonder why the auxiliary verb in this sentence is essere. Another example used avere with the past participle of vedere. Also, my Barron's verb book shows only avere with vedere in compound tenses.
In this case the verb is reflexive, vedersi, that conjugates as "ci siamo visti"; all reflexives use essere.
Am I the only one who doesn't understand what a reflexive verb is, has to look up the meaning of vedersi and doen't know what conjugates mean?
Without the hints any more I am feeling very frustrated trying to get just one lesson done a day when I used to do more than that with half the stress. I can't follow most of the explinations given as I don't understand the terminolgy used.
I literally looked up "define reflexive verb" just vefore i read your comment and now feel better about my need to do it
if you could learn languages without being a bit independent and learning different terminology, then you would have to be 1) supergifted in languages, probably way less than 1% of people, or 2) born there or live there as a kid
- 1466
Agreed. I've learned more about English grammar since I started learning Italian than I was ever taught at school (including GCSE and A level English). As a native you can learn your own language without necessarily understanding the rules behind it (I could read Shakespeare and Chaucer without knowing what a past participle, or an auxiliary verb was). However, to study a foreign language you typically need to understand some grammar, mostly to explain the differences between that language and your native one. Unless you just accept what you're told on faith and learn by repetition, which is an effective, but limited approach.
- 512
Yes totally agree - myself a product of 1970s UK education where the teaching of most grammar concepts for English was out of fashion. I've been forced to now learn most of these concepts in tandem with learning Italian. No wonder I struggled with French at school...
Duolingo used to point out what the errors were instead of just underlining them. I found that more helpful.
I quite agree with you. When grammar was simple, they gave correct sentences. Now grammar is complicated but they don't give the answers. Moreover, if you don't know only one correct answer (one heart), you can't move further.
Still confused why sometimes we can say "ho visto" but here using "visti". Still don't get the point
- 1763
Like f.formica said above: this is NOT the verb "vedere" which would be used with avere (i.e. "ho visto" etc.). This is the verb "verdersi" which may seem 'the same' to us, but it is a reflexive verb. And from what f.formica said reflexive verbs always seem to be conjugated with essere, meaning that the third participle must be flexed (depending on gender and number).
Yeah,I wrote the same. And "We did not see each other since Wednesday" sounds funny,it should be present perfect in English!
Is there such a thing as veduto ( according to the rule provided by Duolingo itself), and if so, what's the difference with visto?
- 809
I studied Italian in college about 40 years ago and indeed we learned Veduto. But I have been reading that while both veduto and visto are both correct the Italian population has almost completely switched to Visto. There are several verbs that fall into this category but the only one I can think of is perdere with perso and perduto both being correct with perso being favored. https://learnamo.com/en/past-participle-italian/
I had the right answer and then changed it to "have not seen you" because I thought visti was for second person singular. Why is it not "vistiamo"?
The verb is "vedere" :) It would be "vediamo" (we see), but here it's "ci siamo visti" (we have seen each other), and "visto" is the past participle (seen): when using essere as auxiliary the participle must agree with the subject.
Im a little confused!!! Why isn't 'abbiamo' used ,for 'have', as 'siamo' translates as 'are'??
My sentence was translated as 'We did not see each other since Wednesday' This is completely wrong in English. The correct translation is given here but it is quite annoying when wrong translations are given. Another annoying thing is when you miss out a letter through careless typing and it is marked as a mistake e.g. 'Th' instead of 'the'. As there is no English word spelt 'th' it seems obvious that this is a typo.
It was wrong and the only difference was that I didn't write wednesday with a capital letter!
what about "we have not seen each other UNTIL wednesday"? what preposition would be used for that? i ask since "da" is generally both "from" (i.e. since) and "to", which are polar opposites. would "a" be used then? the translator i use gives me "fino a"
Why can't this sentence mean 'we have not seen it since Wednesday'? In the sentence 'lei non ci sta in quell macchina', the 'ci' means it not us.
no, i believe the "ci" in your example doesn't mean "it", it is most likely the reflexive particle in "starsi". and in case using "stare" instead of "starsi" would also make sense in such a sentence, then the "ci" would mean "there", i guess. could a native confirm?
I thought in this construction (da) Italians use the present tense (Lit We are not seeing each other since) I am wrong in this?
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Can ci also mean 'them' sometimes? I wrote We have not seen them since Wednesday. Very confused.
no, never them. only us / each other, one(self) (in combo w/reflexive si), it
ci never means them. ci here means us, which, when reflexively used as here, means each other also