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- Topic: Italian >
- "È il cioccolato."
28 Comments
'It is the chocolate' is obviously correct in a word for word sense, but if you wrote 'It is chocolate' you would have got it correct (Take comfort, those who put 'It's chocolate' - I guess duolingo just doesn't like contractions, even though we know this is the same!).
In Italian it is common to put 'the' in front of lots of things even though when you translate it to English you wouldn't actually say 'the.' If you just accept it as a rule and move on, you'll do well!
'This is chocolate' would be 'Questo e' cioccolato.'
:)
DL has always allowed contractions for me. Maybe just keep repirting things like that and it learns. Thx for your explanation.
It's because "È" is a vowel, you will hear a similar pronunciation/sound with any sentence where one word ends in a vowel and the following word also starts with a vowel. It's the same with Spanish.
Yo hablo español es my lenguaje nativo soy de peru y es correcto que "il" suena como "el" y es lo mismo en frances asi que si lo puedes traducir enterderas
I was thinking that some of these sentences are probably just there to teach the difference between the articles and not necessarily as a usable phrase.
True, but I think this one has uses. Ex. "It's the chocolate that really makes this dish!"
The English translation is wrong. Either "It's chocolate." or "This is chocolate."
The Italian translation for "this is chocolate" would be "questo è cioccolato"
1466
I think the official translation is correct. Example: I'm feeling sick. It's the chocolate - in which case I would use this sentence in Italian. Please comment if you disagree as I have no real-life experience with Italian, but this logic would work in French and Portuguese (cognate languages).
I'm confused, so you just add "it"? É means is, Il means the...so where'd "it" come from?
This is what was throwing me off. É is the form of "is" for (he/she/it), so the "it" is implied. I'm noticing that is the way it is much of the time.
Does E have a different meaning with what sentence it is in? So for example E in this sentence means "It is". But in a different sentence where you only need something to say "is" does E translate as both "it is" AND "is"?
- 33
Yes. 'È' means 'is', so the 'it' is understood. 'È' could also mean 'he is' or 'she is', but not in this context, i.e. = chocolate. he≠chocolate, she≠chocolate
