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- "It is definitely not me."
"It is definitely not me."
Translation:Sicuramente non sono io.
17 Comments
A difference of idiom, I think. In English, "it" is the subject, and we say "it's not me." In Italian, the idiom seems to be, "I am not [the person being discussed]." Someone else could probably explain it better, but that's my take.
I was less confused by that since I read, "Sono io," as, "It is I," for reasons I cannot explain. I am more confused by why "mi" is not accepted. Sure, it's poor grammar but if the Oxford English Dictionary accepts poor grammar as gaining legitimacy through repeated use by most of the English-speaking population (e.g., ending sentences with prepositions or using double negatives), then shouldn't I be allowed to end a sentence with the wrong pronoun? That question is, of course, rhetorical. I know I'm wrong but I'm tired and I wanted to use the internet for what it was intended: complaining about silly things.
yes, it's true. Italians are likley to say "sono io" when starting a phone conversation for instance, or "sono Federico". Always sounds odd to Brits who are are likely to think "of course you are you", of course you're federico. you nit - do you go around with a name badge to remind yourself :) . But as apviper says it's just the Italian way of saying "It's me", "It's Federico"
As I've explained elsewhere, Italian inherits the strong tendency in Latin to make the grammatical subject (i.e. the element with which the verb agrees in person and number) more important than what is topical. If the question is "who is the king?", then "the king" is logically the topic of the response. So in some languages, in which topicality is what determines the subject, one says something like "the king is I/he/she..." In French, one says, "le roi, c'est moi." But in Italian, io "pulls" the verb to itself: il re sono io, cf. German der König bin ich. In the linguistics, one speaks of subject-prominent vs. topic-prominent languages.
Okay, so idiomatic expressions need to be learned but it's rather annoying that the literal "Sicuramente non e io" isn't accepted.
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I put "sicuramente non io" and I don't understand why was marked wrong, in Italian I think SONO can be omitted but I'm not sure about it
Imagine that I see a dress - very frilly, say - and, realizing it is not my style, I say, "It is definitely not me." That is what I thought the English sentence in this exercise meant.
