26 Comments
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A Netherlander would never have that many! They're very picky about friends.
But when the statement is "You have a million friends," the correct answer is "Hai un milione di amici." Why isn't it, "Hai un mille di amici"?
Seems like this (for once) is similar to French - 'mille amis' (no preposition), but 'un million d'amis' (preposition required). Reasoning is, I guess, that 'mille' is a number, like 3 or 4. 'Million' is a quantity, like a kilo, so it needs 'of' after it. Anything like million, billion, trillion is treated as a quantity.
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I think "You have A LOT of friends" should be accepted. Similar to "Grazie mille", which means "Thanks a lot". Right?!!
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Yes, but how would it be written in Italian? Come si dice "You have thousands of friends" in italiano?
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Well, I wondered that too, but I think that "migliaia" requires "una" before, just because it's an undefined number(of friends). If you or someone else is able to confirm, please tell us all. Thanks.
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Why not "You have thousand friends"? Why must it be a particular "a" thousand friends?
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Can we say: many friends. It looks like no one counts their friend when is behond a big number. I do not know if i am using a coloquial form but it seems that having many friends could be a more accurate answer that of a legal y litteral one.
This would be odd in reality--exactly one thousand friends. Seems unlikely. In AE we often say "thousands" to mean very many, but not exactly a specified number. I think "you have thousands of friends" would make more sense here. JMTC!
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I thought that "di" was mandatory when saying a number of a countable noun?
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I put "Hai un mille amici" and was marked wrong. Why is "un" incorrect here?
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Because mille already means "one thousand," or "a thousand." Two thousand would be duemila and thousands is migliaia.
