"He misses me."
Translation:Io gli manco.
39 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
262
can someone clarify this answer? isn't "manco" "i miss"? and "manca" would be "he misses" or is "i miss him" equivalent to" he misses me" in italian? how would one say each of those sentences. thanks!
Mancare, like piacere, is a tricky verb. I've learned to think of it this way: "Io gli manco" = I am missing from him (He misses me) "Tu mi manchi" = You are missing from me (I miss you)
It's also more romantic that way! :P
- 28
Maybe better would be to think of the English structure as "I am missed by him", which helps to remind you to use an indirect object pronoun--the same way that you would for "to him" or "for him" (both "gli", indirect).
I think it is not the verbs mancare and piacere who are confusing, the confusing is the wrong explanation of them we are given. piacere means to please, not to like. So the pleasing thing is the subject. Literally "il piacere" means the pleasure. mancare does not mean to miss. It means to be missing for, to be wanted and needed yet not found.
The weird thing is that in English, the meaning of "missing" changes depending on whether it is used transitively or intransitively. For example, if you say "He is eating something" or "He is eating" that is pretty much the same meaning. But if you say "It is missing something" it carries another meaning than "It is missing". But in Italian that does not change so I think Italian is more logical in this respect and it is not the source of confusion, rather the bad explanations are.
Mancare is like piacere... you could say they are verbs that work the opposite way you're used to seeing them in English.
- I miss you / Tu mi manchi
- You miss me / Io ti manco
- He is missing a shoe / Gli manca una scarpa
Can anyone explain why "he misses me" translates as "io GLI manca"? I don't understand why 'he' is referred to as a plural. Thanks
It isn't. "Io manco" means "I am missing". Gli is 3rd person singular indirect object. Thus, the direct translation of the Italian is: "I, to him, am missing."
- 262
thank you. knowing mancare works like piacere is really helpful. are there other verbs in that category?
- 2038
Sembrare is another useful one... To seem.
Mi sembra / It seems to me.
Mi sembra che c'è un problema con questo.
It seems to me that there's a problem with this.
Correct, but be careful with the example you wrote, there is a mistake in the "to be" verb which needs to be in the conjunctive form. Correct formulation is:
Mi sembra che CI SIA un problema con questo
However, most of the natives still struggles with conjunctives so take it easy ;)
Not too many you need to worry about :) Here are a few other verbs, but keep in mind they have other uses beyond this 'category'. For example, importare can also be used to talk about importing something: Loro importano lo zucchero / They import sugar.
- importare: Questo non mi importa / This does not matter to me
- restare: Mi restano due caramelle / I have two candies remaining
- servire: Ti serve un'altra? / Do you need another?
I think interesssare works the same way. Mi interessa solo quello che succederà da questo momento. I'm interested only in what happens next. ( To me, it's interested....)
For some reason I think of this in my head as, "I am missing to him." Don't know how accurate it is, but it helps me get mancare a little better.
I was so confused by this sentence until I translated it into my native Croatian instead of English, which resulted in the same sentence as the Italian one, word by word. Ja (I) mu (to him) nedostajem (miss, am missing). Since it's the same logic used in both languages, I can tell you that you are correct. :)
- 851
Just for interest: would it be possible to say "Gli manco io"? With sentences using cases word order isn't the thing that makes them clear grammatically. Would it just sound odd/wrong? Or are there cases where it might be allowed? In English we would nearly always say "I miss him", but there are occasions where "Him I miss" would be used for a special effect. "Me he misses" sounds less likely, I admit. It is clear grammatically but sounds rather like something said in a dialect modified by Yiddish contact. Anyway, would anyone ever say "gli manco io"?
"Gli manco io" is good when you want to emphasise that it is you who he is missing (and not someone else). For example, if someone says "Io gli manco", your reply can be: "No, gli manco io!"
- 851
Thanks for that. I've learned that word order is often used for emphasis, but didn't have the knowledge of what the effect would be. Now all I've got to do is remember it!
"Gli" is an indirect object pronoun for a 3rd person singular, masculine (as you most probably know, the subject pronoun for 3rd person singular, masculine is "lui" - he). "Gli" can be often translated to English as "to him", but I believe in this case "from him" would make more sense (I'm not an English native speaker). So: Io (I) gli (from him) manco (am missing). This of course sounds weird in English, and the natural translation is "He misses me". "Gli" in fact replaces "a lui". So you can say "a lui piace il cioccolato" or "gli piace il cioccolato". Remember that "gli" and other unstressed pronouns always come before the verb, but after an infinitive, some imperative forms, the gerund and the participle (also: when after an infinitive/imperative/participle, it is written together as one word). You will also see "gli" used as an indirect object pronoun for 3rd person plural but this isn't a written rule, rather something that has become fairly common in every day speech in Italy.
- 28
The font that they use here is really confusing sometimes...
In the sentence that you are asking about, it is "io gli" (manco), not (ever) "lo gli".
The capital letter "L" and the capital letter "I" shouldn't confuse you, but the lower case letter "l" has a slight curve on the bottom, compared to that upper case "I".
I wish they would use a serif font. I looked at the "io" with a capital "i" and thought it was "Lo."
When i look this up elsewhere the correct response is "Lui mi manca" which seems more correct to me than your response of "io gli manco"
- 440
"Lui mi manca" means "I miss him". "Mi" in this sentence means "a me" (to me) and the phrase literally means "there is lack of him to me"
Why "gli"? I am having a hard time figuring out when to use Gli, le, li, lo. Help!!
I wrote "gli manco io" and was marked down. I think this should be an acceptable response.
