"Andiamo a vedere la collezione di macchine."
Translation:We are going to see the car collection.
33 Comments
175
Just FYI non-anglophones, the first English translation in the answer box is wrong. It has to be ".......collection of CARS", not "....collection of CAR". It is called a 'car collection' but, when phrased 'collection of' something, the something has to be plural. You can't have a car collection with only one car in it. :) I have reported it, but not sure if it went through as it is being very slow today.
Yes. A "collection of cars" is a "car collection." The pre-positioned noun "car" acts as a modifier to specify the kind of collection. When we speak of more than one collection of cars, it is still "CAR collections."
It would have been typical in English a thousand years ago (the genitive "of car" is more less the same as "cars"), but then again, the sentence still wouldn't have made sense. Because cars.
A slight confusion here. First, there was no English a thousand years ago. The language began to shape itself only after 1066 when the Normans invaded the island, and it took a while after that before it became anything we could call "English." Second, there is no real "genitive" in English; we call it "possessive," and its grammatical marker is the apostrophe, as in "car's."
I think you have some understanding of how it works: "the car's door" is equivalent to "the door of the car." But in this sentence we don't have the possessive. In no sense does the collection belong to the car; "car collection" specifies what kind of collection it is. It makes sense, however unusual you may think it is.
- 1696
Can this be also translated as 'Let's go see...' (not for this particular sentence, but generally speaking, like 'andiamo a vedere un film') ?
I thought 'andare a' was used only in the sense of going 'to a place', not going 'to do something' which is idiomatic English for 'will do' something' .. in the future. It seems to me that
andiamo vedere = going to see
This is consistent with what we were taught in the infinitive section; none of those verbs was followed by the preposition 'a'.
Both French and English have a similar construction sometimes called the "immediate present": "Je vais aller" or "I am going to go." It indicates something that is going to happen soon. Italian uses "anadare a" + verb a bit differently, to indicate a process, something that has come to be/is happening/or will happen, somewhat like the antique English "came/come to pass that" (which can still be used, by the way, in certain circumstances). Or "andare a" in this case seems to say "We are going (there) to see...," with the sense that we are doing it right now.
My thanks to roberto and xyphax for sharpening up my understanding of the differences in how this verb is used. (I hope I've got it right!)
In Italian you cannot juxtapose the second verb like that, if it's taking the place of a indirect object (I believe in English there is a similar rule)! You always need the right preposition (in this case a).
But I agree that the English translation "We are going to see" loses the andiamo part (as in moving to) . Maybe a better translation would be We are going to go see the the car collection?
Ah, thank you for the Italian perspective. I think the best translation in English depends on whether it means we're going to do something in the future, or we are actually physically going somewhere to do something. Then the two sentences can be differentiated by:
we are going to the meeting to read the proclamation.
we will read the proclamation at the meeting.
It seems the real issue here is that in English, a lot of people use 'going to' to mean future tense (will do something ..)
When would you use this? Would you say this if you were going to see a car museum?
I think "let's go and see ..." should be accepted. It's commonly used in English.
In Germany, yes - but whereabouts in the English-speaking world would that be normal?
Really? Thanks for telling me. I've only been over there a couple of times, and don't remember encountering it. Two nations divided by a single language . . .
- 1307
DL says "...collection of automobile" [singular] is correct. Don't you have any English speakers on your Italian team, Duo?
DL likes laying land-mines. I'm getting a little shell-shocked and hesitant about hitting the 'return' key. Isn't 'macchina' the singular and 'macchine' the plural?
"Go AND see" may not be literal but it is far more natural in English. Reported 14.5.16
