- Forum >
- Topic: Italian >
- "Perché colpisci tuo fratello…
49 Comments
In my opinion "why hit your brother" is an acceptable alternative to "why do you hit your brother". It perhaps has a looser meaning, eg the former could imply a potential future action (why do you plan to hit your brother), while the latter clearly refers to a present or habitual action, but it can also mean exactly the same. I'm not good enough at Italian to know if this is significant, but it seems very unlikely.
331
"Why hit your brother?" doesn't specify who is hitting your brother. It could be asking why his sister/the school bully/anyone at all is hitting your brother because "hit" in english doesn't specify who. "colpisci" specifies "you hit"
172
Allora il Signore disse a Caino: «Dov'è Abele, tuo fratello?». Egli rispose: «Non lo so. Sono forse il guardiano di mio fratello?» Genesis 4:9, CEI
As for #1 there is a discussion above; this sentence translates the same, or you could use "perché stai colpendo tuo fratello?" to stress that the action is happening at this very moment.
Now, #2 is more interesting: all Romance languages inherited a sound shift that occurred in late Latin (probably from Celtic influence) that caused "ce" and "ci" to be pronounced differently from "ca", "co" and "cu" (here there is a discussion). English also inherited this spelling from the Normans, and that's why the C in "call" in pronounced K while the C in "cell" is pronounced S. In Italian the C before E and I is pronounced like the English "CH", while SC before E and I is pronounced like the English "SH".
571
What would "why did you hit your brother" be? I put that and I got it wrong. Please help
301
That would be "Perchè hai colpito tuo fratello" so in this case "hai" (avere) does (kind of) the same thing as "did", but some verbs require "essere" instead of "avere", so it's a bit more complicated than in English. Plus the verb itself takes a different form (colpisci --> colpito)