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- "The knife is ours."
"The knife is ours."
Translation:Il coltello è nostro.
30 Comments
Why is simply "e nostro" as opposed "e il nostro" the given answer? I was under the impression that the article was always required when talking about possession unless referring to a family member... Is that wrong?
First note this subtle difference: Here nostro is being used as "ours" - "the knife is ours". Nostro can also be used as "our" - as in "it is our knife"
The knife is ours - il coltello e' nostro
It is our knife - e' il nostro coltello
The article is required in the second case because the possessive (nostro) is directly in front of the noun.
Or perhaps another way to think of it is: The noun is "il coltello" and when you want to say "our knife" you insert "nostro" between the article and the noun. Notice that the first sentence (The knife is ours) still has "il coltello" - it's just that the word order of the sentence has moved around to change the meaning of nostro to "ours"
It's a bit confusing because Italian doesn't use possessives in exactly the same way English does, but I hope that makes sense.
In English, "a/an" are the indefinite articles and "the" is the definite article.
In Italian, "un/una" are the indefinite articles and "il/i/lo/l'/gli/la/le" are the definite articles.
http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/grammar/articles.html
I see that you are learning a lot of languages at the same time. Be mindful that not all languages have articles in the same manner, in fact, some have none at all (Turkish for instance).
All adjectives, including articles and possessives, agree with the noun they go with. So when it comes to possessives, they must agree with the thing possessed, not who possesses it.
IO
il mio - my singular masculine thing
i miei - my plural masculine (or mixed/unknown) things
la mia - my singular feminine thing
le mie - my plural feminine things
TU
il tuo
i tuoi
la tua
le tue
LUI/LEI
il suo
i suoi
la sua
le sue
NOI
il nostro
i nostri
la nostra
le nostre
VOI
il vostro
i vostri
la vostra
le vostre
LORO
il loro
i loro
la loro
le loro
I don't think I will ever get accustomed to the prolific intellect I've seen in Duolingo (Not sarcasm). It is an ongoing humbling experience. Thank you, to those who give of your time, effort, and knowledge.
These comments are extremely helpful in the learning process! Thanks to all who interject comments.
This may be really basic but are nouns that end in "o" (like "coltello") always masculine?
It's a good rule of thumb, but there are some exceptions (no language is without irregularities): http://italian.about.com/od/grammar/a/gender-of-italian-nouns.htm
Its correct sentence we use nostro because the word coltello is singular masculine if it was i coltelli we would say i nostri that is it ..
so you would have to say "it is ours" to use e il nostro? but if you say "the cat is ours" you just use "Il gatto e nostro???"
It's always "il nostro gatto". The possessive adjective requires the definite article (except for singular unmodified family members).
When it's the possessive pronoun, however, you can use the definite article or not, but the meaning changes subtly.
"La gatta è la mia" means "The CAT (and not something else) is mine."
"La gatta è mia" means "The cat is MINE (and not someone else's)."
"Le" and "nostro" never go together because that violates grammatical gender agreement.
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/453132?comment_id=22097562
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/453132?comment_id=32947799
