"La famiglia incontra la moglie nel ristorante."
Translation:The family meets the wife in the restaurant.
59 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
This is a difficult one and I'm a bit stumped by them marking my answer (the family meet my wife in the restaurant) as incorrect.
In English we often conjugate verbs referring to 'family' as 3rd person plural OR 3rd person singular, so idiomatic English should allow me to use 'the family meet' here, as I have done, but they have said is incorrect.
Also, like in French, I have noticed that in Italian they often say 'la moglie' or 'il marito' where in English we would say 'my wife' or 'my husband' - so I wrote 'my wife' on that basis and it also is marked wrong.
A little explanation of grammar would be helpful - yes I learn by making mistakes but to have the mistakes corrected with an explanation of why they are wrong (after the lesson, perhaps?) would help a great deal
Italians also uses 'mia moglie' or 'mio marito' or 'la moglie' or 'il marito', but it depends on which wife or husband your're talking to.
If I am talking about my wife I would say 'mia moglie' and not 'la moglie'. If I am talking to you about the wife of our friend I would say 'la moglie'.
Here, the Italian sentence says 'la moglie' and not 'mia moglie' so the correct translation, as far as I know, is 'the wife'.
'The family meet ...' - that sounds like British English to me. Similar to 'the government are ... ' or ' our football side are ...', where the American equivalent would be 'the government is ...', or ' our soccer team is ...'.
You could be very right. I'm British and put 'Meet'. It came 'naturally.' But now I read 'meets,' that looks equally correct too. I think with 'Teams, Governments or Sides', we tend to think of them as plural. e.g. A 'football team' is a 'side' (singular) of 'players' (plural) and we Brits seem to like the fact that a team is a lot of individuals. Does that make any sense? lol :)
The family is singular though so really it should be in the 3rd person singular. I'm British and wouldn't use meet.
280
Interestingly, I Feel Like I Could Use Both "Is" Or "Are" In Those Cases, Depending On If, Say, I'm Referring To A Football Team As A Singular Unit, Or A Group Of Individuals, Each Themselves A Unit.
Agreed. The app should accept "meet" or "meets". The latter is the grammatically correct answer, but the common English us the former alternative. Duolingo seems to go for the commonly accepted frequently elsewhere, so for consistency.....
Why isn't it "incontrano?" Is it because the wife is the object, and so you conjugate the verb according to her?
I think it's because 'la famiglia' is a singular noun - the / one family as a unit rather than individual and therefore plural members.
La famiglia is indeed a collective noun and so takes the third person singular form of the verb.
"incontrano" would refer to loro. since "famiglia" is a singular verb like "verdora" the correct way would be using a third person singular form "incontra" like Diffal here said :) this can be confusing if your native language is english for example.
This is a very stilted sentence in English. Whose wife? Is there only one wife there?
- 238
Saying "the wife" is a derogatory term in English. My wife or his wife is much more polite.
It seems in almost all cases the present indicative can be used to express the present progressive. So, why is "the family IS MEETING" not an acceptable translation of this verb conjugation?
I think "is meeting" is the gerund. So I'm pretty sure if you wanted to say "is meeting", it would be "la famiglia sta incontrando".
- 830
Can this sentence sometimes mean, "The family is meeting the wife in the restaurant"? - future simple tense. Or is this sentence strictly in the Present Simple?
- 280
"The Family Is Meeting..." Isn't Necessarily Future, It Could Describe That The Action Is Ongoing. Also, No, I Do Not Believe It Could Be Used As Simple Future As Well.
I always find the sentence slightly disconserting. I mean, is she in trouble?
- 1070
I would say "at the restaurant" is more natural, at least in American English. We also treat collective nouns like family as singular, whereas the the British prefer plural.
I agree about "at the restaurant." I don't think any (native) English speaker would say "in the restaurant" in this case, even if it is the "correct" translation of the given Italian.
- 1115
I don't agree. I am a native speaker. It all depends on the context. You might arrange to meet someone AT the restaurant but once you are sitting down eating you are definitely IN the restaurant. Maybe the exclusive use of AT is an American thing as John571126 suggests. He also says the British prefer the plural for "family" and is probably right. However, it is strictly speaking a singular word no matter which side of the Atlantic you are on. A rule is still a rule even though we Brits are maybe just a bit too casual about obeying it, at least in spoken language.
I am not a native, and I don't find the logical in this sentence; La famiglia incontra la mogli nel ristorante, "mogli" is wife, if the sentence was: La famiglia incontra la madre nel ristorante", make sense. Have sense; La famiglia incontra il figlio; Il uomo incontra la moglie nel ristorante ; Lui incontra la moglie nel ristorante. Could someone justify the mogli in the original sentence?
A man travels to another country. He marries a woman from that country. He brings his wife back to his country and then invites his family to dinner at a restaurant. The family meets the wife in the restaurant.
- 280
If You Were Telling A Story You Might Not Refer To People By Names (Especially If You Don't Know Them), So You Might Call One Person "The Wife", Thus If They Meet With "The Family" (Likely Some Family Specified Earlier In The Story), You Could Say The Family Meets The Wife In The Restaurant.
how could it be THE wife when she is HIS wife?? Not sure I understand the language on this one ...
Can "The family meets my wife in the restaurant" also be a correct translation?
I read that if there is no context the definite article is understands as "my wife", but it adds a childish sense to the sentence (like saying this to your niece maybe(?))
As in previous sentence: "Invitiamo la nonna a cena" -> we invite grandma to dinner -> https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/876025
Wife and spouse means the same but spouse is more formal f.i. if you don' t know the woman
- 1115
"Spouse" is the wrong answer. The Italian is moglie, which translates as wife. A spouse can be either a wife or a husband.
The mechanic mistake in one letter have to be accepted. If it is learning Italian, learn Italian but not English.
Context is all. The family meets the wife sounds very colloquial in British English. Instead of saying : here's my wife - someone says here's the wife. It's usually a joking way of pretending to put "the wife" on a pedestal. She's just not my wife anymore, she is The Wife per excellence. I don't think that in normal conversation you can have the wife without saying the wife of whom. For example : the family meets the neighbours' wife,...
What is wrong with duolingo all of a sudden? I had to press start 12 times before it would go on to the next question. I don't have all this time to waste.
'the family meet the wife in the restraurant' is still marked as wrong. This sentrence does not really make sense, if it is third person how does the family know it is the wife..... surely should be 'my wife' .
This sounds like a soap storyline. There will be drama and shouting in the restaurant. Maybe the wife will storm out in tears?
Now this is weird. Translating to English I put 'meet' which was wrong. A few questions later, I'm prompted to fill in the missing word in the same sentence 'the family meet the wife in the _' ???
"They are a family" ---> "They encounter" ---> "The family encounter". Equally, "It is a family" ---> "The family encounters", but you would never say "It encounters" when talking about the family... English is very strange.
I always get these sentences wrong because I can never remember if it's "restaraunt" or "restaurant".