"Perché colpisci tuo fratello?"
Translation:Why do you hit your brother?
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Yes, fights between siblings happens anywhere. Your way of answering, and that being acceptable, only happens in the great big war nation.
Essi lo fanno sempre
or
Loro lo fanno sempre
sempre can be put before of lo fanno but it is usually put after the verb
the word "lo" means "it"
For anyone wondering how to say this in Italian, it's "Ma ha iniziato/cominciato lui!"
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?
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.
It is wrong because of the English grammar: We usually make questions by changing the word order and in simple present questions we use do/does: Why DO you hit your brother?
No, you are wrong- I am an educated native English speaker in England, and I assure you that "Why hit your brother?" is also correct. You betray that you are not a native speaker because you wrote "... the English grammar" - that is incorrect. It should just be "...English grammar"
If I interpret correctly the different nuance, I believe the correct translation for "Why hit your brother" would be "Perché colpire tuo fratello?". Yet I can't explain the difference...
One possible nuance of "Why hit your brother?" could be that the person hasn't done it yet. I could be trying to dissuade him/her from doing it. Or it could perhaps be asking what it accomplishes, not necessarily the person's motivation for doing it is.
'Why hit your brother?' is correct, however I'd say 'why do you hit your brother?' Is more commonly used.
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It is still bad grammar. Just because you are a native English speaker doesn't mean you speaker proper like!
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.
I'd be interested to hear about the text on English grammar some of you guys are using to explain this?
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.
No, because the article isn't used for family members in the singular.
Is there no word for 'DID' in italian? I automatically assume when I read this that it's past tense. Do people casually ask this? Who would ever fess up?!
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)
Well i was totally off in here. I thought it meant "why are you blaming your brother ?" All because "mia colpa" means "my bad" or "my error" and somehow that sent my brain in a completely wrong direction