46 Comments
FYI i wrote "why are you hitting your brother" and it was accepted. I find this a more natural way of speaking than the suggested answer.
'You are hitting', and 'you hit' are both translations of the present tense and mean the same thing.
They don't generally mean the same thing. Here "why are you hitting your brother" means you are doing it right now, but "why do you hit your brother?" suggests a habit of hitting him. (It can be used to mean the former, but that's rather antique usage.)
The difference in English is apparent and used to imply things, like you say, but in other languages (e.g. Italian, Spanish, German) it isn't so apparent since none of the words change and thus one sentence in Italian can imply two different things in English and still be correct.
I'm interested to know why "Why hit your brother?" is wrong. Would that need a different verb?
Would also argue that it is grammatically sub par. I'd advise you to use "why would you hit your brother" or as suggested by DL.
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"
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
It's one of the oddities of Italian that you don't use the definite article before family members in the singular.
2 questions:
1) How would you say: "Why are you hitting your brother?"
2) Is it pronounced "col-pi-she" or "col-pis-ki". In the previous example the "k" sound was heard and colpisco was pronounced "col-pis-ko".
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".
The other combinations are pronounced exactly as written, i.e. s+c/k+o.
No, colpire is limited to one hit, for a complete beating there are several verbs, like picchiare, menare, battere, and so on.
27.04.2014
Another solution:"Why do you strike your brother?"is it right???
What would "why did you hit your brother" be? I put that and I got it wrong. Please help
That would be one of the past tenses - "colpisci" is present tense.
"Why hit your brother" is better English and should certainly be accepted.
No, because the article isn't used for family members in the singular.
