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- Topic: Italian >
- "È una farfalla."
63 Comments
All the different kinds of pasta are slowly starting to make sense now...
I always called those bowties, and seldom called them butterflies. They look like both :)
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Hang on a minute! Let's say I am at the ballet for the evening. One dancer particularly catches my eye with his grace and movement. I lean over and whisper in my wife's ear..."He is a butterfly!" She nods and understands. But DL doesn't appreciate ballet, hence I was marked "wrong" for translating "È una farfalla" as "He is a butterfly". Seems harsh :-)
The butterfly isn't required to be a girl; the word farfalla is feminine, which is unrelated entirely to human gender
No, because there are male and female butterfly's thank goodness, or we would never have any new ones!
I love the way the speaker told that. Like a child who sees a butterfly the first time ;) cute
A butterflie isn't a "she", it's a "it". In the english language, he/she is meant for people (hence you can tell that someone really likes something when they refer to it as a he/she, e.g sailors referring to their boats as "she", people with pets saying "he's adorable")
Are you saying that the butterfly can NOT be a female? As I understand it, "È" is ambiguously "he," she," and "it," all at once, unless a prounoun is added.
Please read my comment again, I am speaking about the english language. In english, a butterfly is an "it", not a "she".
But surely this could be a metaphorical sense of the phrase, saying that a woman or a man is a butterfly, someone who flits from things to things (or people to people)
In English, a butterfly can be a "she," though, as well as a "he", or an "it."
No, in english, animals are referred to as "it". However, as I said in my first comment, people can choose to refer to them with "he" or "she", but that is under special circunstances - usually personal feelings towards the particular animal or a species. But, from an objective, following-the-rules point of view it's "I saw a butterfly. It was beautiful".
In Italian "farfalla" is feminine but translating into English butterfly is neuter, "it".
In English, a butterfly is an it, UNLESS you know the biological gender of THAT specific butterfly. I'm assuming in Italian, you could use the pronoun in this case?
Or, see philObrien's comment for the metaphorical butterfly.
Isn't language fun?
Io sono una farfalla is a valid sentence (and it is) then why isn't she's a butterfly a valid translation for this sentence.
If you would have read the OTHER comment above, it said that in English, animals are an "it" and never a "he" or "she" in the grammatically correct sence. In other words, it means that when translating into a language that insist that non-people are all "its" and that animals, birds, fishes, marine animals are all "its" we can not say "she" because we can not pretend we are talking about a Vegan or homo sapian and their "pets".
"E" is the word "is" so it should let it be he is or she is a butterfly!? Is this a mistake or am I wrong?
I just got 'È' and 'E' confused for the first time. I'm guessing this will happen again roughly 9,994 times.
I wrote the capital letter 'E' plus an accent next to it like -- E' -- to simulate the capital letter e with grave accent on it. Duolingo has signaled it as a warning. Although Italian keyboards do have vocal with accents for Italian characters as keys, they don't have the capital counterpart. Maybe Duolingo can accept the capital letter e with apostrophe after it as transliteration for capital letter E with grave accent on it....
Hi CodeVisio, To write a capital "E" with a grave accent, try ALT key plus 0200 on your numeric keypad (on the right side of your keyboard, NOT the usual numbers across the top rows). Hope that helps :-)
try holding down on the letter (e) and a list of accents may appear above
Right under the space to type Italian there is a list of vowels with accents. Just click the one you need.
Why is "you are a butterfly" wrong? Isn't "è" also the polite form of "you are" that you would say to a stranger (which doesn't exist in English)? Or am I wrong?
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Hey DuoLingo , I said "It's a butterfly" not "It is a butterfly" first go today and ive lost a heart already : (
in my town (in argentina) farfalla=cocaine o.o, so this excersise was very funny
No. You don't need to write the subject in Italian if it is only the regular pronoun. You can for exemple say: "Io sono una ragazza" or "sono una ragazzo".
i almost was done but i messed up and didnt get a chance to use a heart refill!! :(
