95 Comments
The voice for Italian always sounds like she is out of breath and in pain
For me, it was playing the slow version of audio by default, which seemed out of of breath. When I listened to the normal one, it was fine.
I agree with you. Why isn't it possible to translate "la donna" as "the lady"?
It is possible to write both "the lady" and "the woman", but it would be better to translate "the lady" with "la signora".
for me donna is woman or lady (informal), signora would be more formal. my English is not so good but maybe miss?
Lady & woman are not interchangable in English. Lady is the feminine form of gentleman. Think ladylike which has to do with gentle mannerims, delicate behaviors, class. A woman is just a female.
Actually they are used interchangeably all the time unless otherwise specified. Lady is the more common usage for such sentences as " I saw a lady in the store." Tp insist that "lady" is the feminine form of gentleman is to insist on an archaic usage.
maybe the confusion occurs from the well known Spanish characters - dona Clara, dona Alba - some ladies...?
I think that could be... but the translation for lady is signora... it's more respectful...
When the voice says "ha una tazza" it's almost impossible to hear the una. Do typical Italian speakers run those together into one sound?
I couldn't hear "ha" either, it just sounded like " donna una". She should pause between the words when teaching a language to non native speakers.
I find saying the "ha" hard because it's almost silent and gets swallowed by the next words
I don't think it's hard to say, but it's definitely hard to hear her say it.
so when i hover over 'una tazza' it tells me it translates to 'cup,mug and bowl'. when i type bowl as a translation it tells me i'm wrong and only 'cup' would be accepted..help!
It probably means that tazza means cup, but could be used to describe a mug or bowl. Just like how we could use the word cup to describe a mug, but cup doesn't mean mug.
I think that the first translation is the word chosen to execute the lesson, and the other translations are to use for specific daily usage.
1945
tazza means cup. It's also used when you talk about measuring cups. bicchiere means glass. You can drink out of both of them, but cups are smaller, like tea cups, and glasses are bigger, like you'd pour yourself a glass of juice.
Can you help me, and explain in what way we put ending in word "have" in Italian ?
- 1945
Are you asking how to conjugate the verb avere (to have) in Italian?
io ho
tu hai
lui/lei ha
noi abbiamo
voi avete
loro hanno
- 1945
If the verb is regular, then this chart will help:
If it's irregular like "avere", there's always http://www.italian-verbs.com/
I can't even hear the "ha". Especially as it comes right after "donna". Do Italians put the sounds all together when they speak or would they usually have a slight pause between "donna" and "ha"?
Hi Jasutino, I'm think that there is little distiction between the "ha" and the "donna" when one is talking in a regular speed. This happens in english too. I read a funny story about a girl who was learning english and at a fast food restaurant could not understand why the attendant said "debiol" when she finished her request. Turns out that what he was really saying was "would that be all?" Keep studying and you will understand everything clearly eventually.
Haha. Yeah that makes sense, thanks for the info. A lot of ear training awaits me.
- 1945
You memorize a noun's gender as part of the vocabulary lesson. "Cup - tazza, feminine."
For the most part, nouns that end with "a" in the singular and "e" in the plural are feminine. For the most part, nouns that end with "o" in the singular and "i" in the plural are masculine.
Hey, thanks for that. I have to keep in mind the, donna/donne, uomo/uomini, ragazza/ragazze and ragazzo/ragazzi. I've been wondering about the gender all this time. It's hard enough that English is not my language and I have remind myself that this lesson is 'English speakers based' translation lesson. Grazie mille. :-)
@Rae.F & @Heloisa-Angeli, wow, I was away that much. My tablet was broken and though I installed the app on my iPhone i just don't have enough time for this.
Anyway, I'm a Filipino and my mother tongue is Tagalog or Filipino (I myself don't even know w/c is it between the two but its both the same thing for me), the language itself is a mixed of Spanish, Chinese, Malay, Indian, Arabic and English.
Referring a gender sometimes can be guess by using professional 'titles' like (for Doctor, Professor, Lawyer) Doktor/Doktora; Profesor/Profesora (very Spanish), Abogado/Abogada.
But when talking or referring to someone it's very hard.
EX. He lied (OR) She lied. Filipino: Nagsinungaling siya. (SIYA is use to refer a person)
It's hers. OR It's his. Sa kanya ito/yan. (KANYA is for HER/HERS or HIS.)
So, the best way to address someone, you either use his/her name or point at him/her (w/c is rude, i know).
Sorry for the very very late response. :D
Yeah. Could you tell us which is your mother tongue? It is something genderless like english?
My computer clearly pronounces the zz like an English th like in think. Maybe we have different speech synthesis programs...
- 1945
Cups don't always have handles: http://images.birthdayinabox.com/BIABViewLarger/CupSldOr.jpg
Mugs always have handles: https://0.s3.envato.com/files/57468299/White%20Coffee%20Mug(590x590).jpg
That sucks! I didn't finished the sentence didn't even said it right. I said, 'La do-wa' and push the button and I was correct. Makes me wonder why I was wrong the last three or is it the app itself?
- 1945
Speech recognition software is far from perfect. I've turned it off in my settings.
Come on... I'm saying this peetty clearly your dammed green owl =<sub>~</sub>
when I scrolled over tazza, it said it meant basin, there was nothing that said cup.
This is not accurate. Really. "Tazza" is that fancy glass that is used to drink wine. Well... Is used for other drinks too. Sorry that I'm not able to explain in a better way.
Guys enough already with this argument on whether we can say lady instead of woman. It has been explained several times that woman and lady is not the same strictly speaking. Of course in spoken language it is you who will choose whether you call or point at someone or talk about someone as a woman or a lady. But for you to be able to use those words you had to firstly learn them BOTH. Come on
How do you know it is has and not had? The sentence works both ways for me
- 1945
Because "ha" is present tense, and it will be a while before Duolingo introduces the past tense.
Just because a sentence is good in and of itself doesn't mean it's an appropriate translation.
https://www.italian-verbs.com/italian-verbs/conjugation.php?parola=avere
It's really annoying, that I always type "the glass" for "la tazza" instead of "the cup" because my family calls then glasses, since all of our cups are glass. Does anyone else do this? Is it wrong? Is there a separate word for glass?
- 1945
"Glass" is "il bicchiere".
It helps me to remember that "la tazza" is "cup" because it's a cognate in many of the Romance languages (I learned French when I was young).
ITALIAN: la tazza
SPANISH: la taza
FRENCH: la tasse
PORTUGUESE: a taça
Also, I frequently see these words used to indicate a measuring cup, which also helps a lot.
you are wrong on portuguese. cup/la tazza in portuguese is "xicara" or maybe "copo" without the wing. "taça" means ...Stemware. well, it means anything from metal or glass (never ceramic) with a tall feet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glassware#Stemware
It appears that the woman is not a Lady - the algorithm does not accept "he Lady" as a translation for La Donna. I appreciate this is an American programme and as we all know as an Englishman we are two nations separated by a common tongue; so it's fun for me to learn that caramella is 'candy' & not 'sweets' as in UK
Am I the only one who does not hear the "ha"? It sounds like "La donna una tazza"
"Tazza" is the sort of thing that one uses to drink wine, no one would not drink wine from a bowl. Bowl=Ciotola.
- 1945
Yes. un is masculine and una is feminine. It's explained in the Tips and Notes section:
My answer would not be accepted unless i completed the sentence with a space or full stop.
- 1945
Speaking as a woman, I don't find that to be true. Although calling someone a lady might feel like elevating her, there is nothing wrong with calling someone a woman. It's neutral.
La donne its not plurial isn't it ? So it musst be the womAn the correct translation and not the womEn
- 259
The sentence is "La donna ha una tazza." "La donna" is singular and "Le donne" is plural. "La donne" is a mistake or error, because the article must correspond in gender and number with the noun.
tass is a proper english word borrowed from a persian word not only italian has tazze as a word many languages does yet when i put tass it is not considered "right". frustrating!
- 1945
It is not a commonly used word and therefore the course developers did not put it in the answer database.
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