"La famiglia incontra la moglie nel ristorante."
Translation:The family meets the wife in the restaurant.
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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'.
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 :)
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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.
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Saying "the wife" is a derogatory term in English. My wife or his wife is much more polite.
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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?
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"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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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
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"Spouse" is the wrong answer. The Italian is moglie, which translates as wife. A spouse can be either a wife or a husband.
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,...