"It is not my wife's couch."
Translation:Non è il sofà di mia moglie.
39 Comments
Because "moglie" and "marito" are nouns that follow the same rule which applies to family members:
- 1 family member = NO definite article before possessive (Lei è mia moglie, Lui è suo fratello)
- 2 or more family members = there IS a definite article before possessive (le nostre moglie, I suoi fratelli)
One lingot to the man that took the time to explain that for the rest of us. Thank you!
I used divano, and the alternate correct answer had 'divano'...maybe you spelled it wrong?
It's one of those pesky irregular masculine singular nouns that doesn't end with e or o. Given that it has an accent over the last letter à it'll probably be the same word in the plural as well, i sofà, the sofas. Another one like this is città (city). It's an invariable noun
I suspect it is a word that has been taken from another language, they often turn out to be masculine, like the list of greek ones in the link above. Mostly I hear people use the word divano instead
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Is there a difference between "sposa" and "moglie"? I said "sposa" and it was marked wrong, although it is in the hints. Would "sposa" be more like "bride" than wife?
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Thanks. Strangely enough I got one with "bride" in it today. DL read my mind!
Because "moglie" is singular for "wife". And "mogli" (wives) is plural. They are exceptions.
The main option for couch I had was 'esprimere' (to express).... did that happen to anyone else? I've reported the fault
Couch is a little used verb meaning to express, as in "I'll couch it in terms you can understand."
Yes, but I was just pointing out to CiarinSmith that it's not a "fault", it's just another meaning of the word. The translation clues given for a word are not necessarily related to the context of the test phrase.
Ah I see, well that DOES make sense, but I'm willing to bet a lot of people don't know that 'couch' is also a verb (I certainly didn't). I momentarily forgot the word for sofa so I hovered, but the clue didn't help me much. It may be correct, but quite misleading as well
argh no matter how many times I do this question I can't get the combination of words right, "the sofa is not of my wife" or "the wife of me is not my sofa" idk i can never get it
When something is said to be "of someone" in Italian, e.g. "of my wife", then we use the possessive "'s" in English = "my wife's". So "il sofá di mia moglie" = "the sofa of my wife" = "the sofa is my wife's". If it's negative then you'd get "il sofá non è di mia moglie" = "the sofa is not of my wife" = "the sofa is not my wife's". :)
I know it's 'sofà' for couch, but between the answers there was also asprime. Kind a strange..it was a wrong translation
This post has a bit of background info if you want to read it in Italian: https://www.stilearte.it/divano-sofa-ottomana-o-canape-sono-cose-diverse-cosa-significano-i-loro-nomi/
In short, as confusedbeetle wrote, they're the same thing, with different origins: sofa is from Persian, divan from Turkish, and there are also much less common names such as "ottomana" (still a Turkish reference) and "canapè" (from French).
In terms of usage, divano > sofà > everything else. Occasionally you can hear sofà for a stuffed armchair as well (poltrona).
