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- Topic: Italian >
- "I cannot wait."
"I cannot wait."
Translation:Non vedo l'ora.
72 Comments
61
You have a point, this is an idiomatic sentence and the meaning is not obvious to someone who's never come across it before. However, in reality when someone is talking to you it is very likely you hear this in place of "non posso aspetto" or something similar.
At the end of the day, personally I see this (duolingo) as one of many available learning tools. No more, no less. And as part of the learning curve you are allowed to get things wrong, it's not an exam (in fact make that "you WILL get things wrong - learning a language from scratch is a difficult process!")
I take your point that it might seem harsh if you've never come across it before, but now you have. And as a result of getting this "wrong" in a safe environment where no harm has been done, nobody's been misunderstood or upset you will now remember this sentence/idiom. Isn't that the purpose of learning?
862
I will make the point that Duo provides a specific tool headed 'idioms' which is optional ad not essential which is a good thing. To me, I am runnibg 8 languages here and find idioms as a set back when in the 'must do' lessons. Idioms invariably break the standard rules of grammar abd syntax but learners need to know the very essential main rules (in this nice casual way) so that becomes embedded thoroughly first. Once that is achieved, we can always go vack to the idioms later. We will all make enough mistakes in learning the essential grammar. Idioms especially early in the course will only cloud the issue. So for that reason I'd say put all idioms only under the 'idioms' icon. Regards.
513
Yeah and when these types of sentences CONTINUE to pop up without enough frequency to enable a person to remember, it causes a person to lose motivation and abandon the learning process. No one likes being wrong through no fault of their own.
1150
The philisophy of DL is "learn through error"
Make a mistake once. Don't make it a second time.
Stop complaining. Just learn!
"I cannot wait to hear the record." - "Non vedo l'ora di sentire il disco."
"No, I cannot wait a year." - "No, non posso aspettare un anno."
My two cents as a language/linguistics instructor: This needs to be fixed. The glosses give you no indication, only literal translations that don't even appear as options (at least when I encountered it). I can try to figure out (semi-logically, semi-intuitively) what to respond, but I have decades of language experience. This is likely to frustrate many learners. If you can guarantee that the literal words won't appear as options, and that a literal translation will be accepted (as long as it's basically correct), then go ahead and indicate that this is an idiomatic expression, and allow learners to puzzle it out, OR only provide the words that are in the expression, and let them arrange them. THEN, and ONLY then, is it not like throwing a trick question at them.
The first time I tried this sentence I got it wrong but then I saw the actual Italian translation and instantly comprehended what it meant mainly because of my Spanish. In Spanish "No veo la hora..." means "I can't wait". For example "No veo la hora que se caiga" means "I can't wait until he/she falls".
Though http://context.reverso.net/traduzione/inglese-italiano/i+can%27t+wait suggests that the Non vedo l'ora is far more common.
As someone with a background in linguistics, I cannot agree with that statement. Common usage is exactly what determines "correctness".
If more people say "Non vedo l'ora", then that is the expression. If fewer people say "Non posso attendere", then that is the variant.
There's the artificial standard dialect you're explicitly taught in school, which almost nobody uses naturally, and there's the dialect you grew up learning that nobody had to explicitly teach you, which varies from region to region.
It's all a matter of what native speakers use more frequently.
However in this case, since it is the idiom used in Italian for this concept, Non vedo l'ora is the phrase we should use for 'I can't wait' if we want to sound as if we're fluent when talking to an Italian. But as has already been noted, the other phrase works too. Non posso aspettare anyway. If you want to argue the attendere there's a report button for that. Except that here it doesn't work because it's in the intransitive mode where attendere means 'attend to' not 'await'. You need something to wait for specified for it to mean wait. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/italian-english/attendere
174
I got it right but I think it should not be in here. I am really annoyed by all these excuses for Duo. This is just poor.
You have not been blocked, but feedback -- positive or negative -- that is not constructive is just clutter and is subject to removal. Negative feedback without any explanation is just complaining, and that is useless. We're not mind-readers. We cannot confirm that you actually answered correctly if you do not share your full, exact, letter-for-letter answer with us. Not by re-typing, but by copying and pasting or taking a screenshot. 90% of the time, people think they did it right but they really made an error that they did not see. The other 10% of the time, either the course contributors did not add that to the database or the app glitched.