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- "La loro cena è nel piatto."
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I'm a native spanish speaker who knows english and wants to learn italian... Loro in spanish means "parrot". My brain is so confused right now!! Hahaha
Lol And so in Filipino language. We adopted spanish LORO to mean the parrot bird.
Loro in Portuguese is a name we would give to a pet parrot hahahaha Never thought on the possibility... Now the world makes sense again hahaha
I had to learn a little Spanish while have lived in Toluca, Mexico. Already new little Italian....lots of confusions: salir and salire, molestar and molestare have different meanings....
Just to clarify, anytime you're saying "their __", whether you use "la" or "il" before "loro" depends on whether the noun it's referring to is masculine or feminine?
Propria means that the thing belongs to the person "using" it. She eats 'her own' sandwich. He has 'his own' cat. Loro means their. I eat 'their' cake.
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It's hard to understand the robot voice in fast mode for this sentence. I wonder if it's the same in real life.
It's relatively easier, though italians tend to speak very fast. Also, in real life you have people's body language that helps a lot.
I agree, I play it several times and when the correct word is nel, I am hearing nella. I have found even on the slow speed I hear something other than what it says is correct.?????
Dunno if things changed but 7 years after your comment, it sounds fine to me, a native speaker, both pronunciation- and speed-wise.
So "loro" is their. But in this sentence it is their dinner. Cena is feminine but I've seen " loro orso" which is masculine singular. Enlighten me please.
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Loro is masculine and feminine, singular and plural. It does not change, unlike the other possessives.
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Indeed you are both correct. But I'd love to know the reason for this grammatical quirk. No doubt lost in time.
After raising children and trying to teach them proper English, my god, Italian seems to have way fewer quirks that English does! Probably because English is such a mongrel language, with its mix of Latin/German ancestry.
PARCHMENT WARNING: watch out, this is really long and I'm terribly sorry for it.
"Loro" derives from "illorum", genitive plural of "ille" (masculin). It means "that", but it can also be used as a pronoun to address something or someone.
Anyway, the other Italian possessives derived from their Latin counterparts, which were variable in gender and number (and in cases, but that's a story for another time including unlucky Italian students forced to learn declension tables and other Latin horrors. Ty Ministry of Education). "Illorum" is plural, sure, but it had the feminine counterpart "illarum". The thing is, having "loro", "laro", "liro" and "lero" would have been extremely awkward and foreign to Italian grammar prescribing the vowel replacement to happen only at the end of the word and not inside, so I really think this quirk (I'd call it one more of an irregularity in this cursed, messy but beautiful language) is due to the very proven concepts of force of habit and the unspoken (but familiar to any human with linguistical abilities) respect of pre existing grammar. Anyway, the evolution period of Latin becoming 1300 Dante's Florentine dialect stretched all the bloody Middle Ages and therefore is hella obscure and mine's just a hypothesis, so take with a grain of salt.
Out of curiosity, in Latin "loro" was "suus" (and sua and suum, this is the singular). It was used eithed for the 3rd person singular AND plural. Going back at the obscurity of that period I personally dislike called Middle Ages, I really don't know what was that made people restrict "suus" only to 3rd person singular. Maybe they just wanted to distinguish between what belonged to a person and what to a crowd.
If you have found out something, please tell me under this long comment.
Hope I've helped (and been clear to the extent of English being my L2 allows me)!
For "their" it's always "loro" but it has to have a definite article preceeding it that corresponds with the object that is "theirs." So, it's "la loro" here because "cena" is feminine singular, and "la" is the article for that. If it was "Their dog eats" It'd be "il loro cane mangia" Same for plural. For example, "the women love their children" - " Le donne amano i loro bambini"
The voice for this is absolutely terrible. Cena is not pronounced with correct accent. Actually, the whole sentence did not have the right stresses.
I wrote 'their food is on the plate' but it corrected me as 'their supper is on the plate'. I thought cena meant food?
I thought "loro" was to be for 3rd person, plurar. So it has multiple used then?
Hi!
Would anyone explain the difference between proprio, propri, and propria? It seems they have different meanings, or when do I use each one?
Thanks!
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When used as an ADJECTIVE, they all mean "own" (e.g. his [own] apple; her [own] cats. Which version to use is dependent on the NOUN as the adjective needs to match in gender and number.
Proprio - Masculine single / Propria - Feminine single
Propri - Masculine plural / Proprie - Feminine plural <-- remember this is when the noun is plural, not the people 'owning' that noun
Proprio is also used as an ADVERB to mean "really". Sono proprio stanco = I'm really tired. When used as an adverb, the ending doesn't change; it's always "proprio".
Why is its not "...è sul (on the) piatto." ? because i understand nel as saying "in the plate"
No. Loro may be masculine and feminine . La loro torta ( torta is feminine) . Also il loro cappelo ( il cappello, masculine).
It's funny, it's the same thing in french. Loro stays Leur to designate a single item.
Does it change to account for plurality? Like " Le loro torte?" Or such as " i loro panino stanno nel mio piatto, voglio mangiare, ma non posso " ? Grazie millie amici
i don't understand the difference between la loro and la propria? or they are the same? could anyone explain?
The il and la are in respect to the noun that follows loro. In this case it was (la) cena, Had the noun been (il) pranzo then we would have said il loro pranzo.
why "ON" but not "IN" the plate? Is not "SUL" piatto. isn't it correct to say "IN the plate" in English?
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isn't it correct to say "IN the plate" in English?
Not really. In English, we say 'on the plate' or 'in the dish', 'in the bowl'.
This is a strange lesson; are we learning Italian or English? :-D
could I have said... La loro cena è sul piatto I get confused when to use nel vs sul. I thought sul was on the and nel is in the but I guess both are on the?
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why not "Le loro cene" as we would say their dinnerS are on the plates. OR maybe it could just be a large plate in the middle of the table and everyone helps themselves.
Shouldn't it be loro cenano? Because it's io ceno, lui/lei cena and stuff like that
You conjungated the verb "cenare" correctly, but here, "cena" is a noun, not a verb, and "loro" is a possessive adjective, not the subject. La loro cena (their dinner) è sul piatto (is on the plate). Hope it helps
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Why don't you say La loro cena è sul piatto instead of la loro cena è nel piatto. Sul means on top of, while nel means more "in the" rather than "on the". For example, to say the pattern is in the plate - Il modello è nel piatto.
Because of Duo Lingo study we know clearly the right word is "nel." However, the voice f. said "nella." What to do???
Why "La loro"? It should be just "loro cena" ?? because this is the first time i am seeing some prefix infront of personal pronouns like " io, tu, noi, voi, loro". I have never seen something like "la, il or lo" infront of "io or tu".
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Il for a masculine subject, la for feminine. Their dinner is la loro cena. Their lunch is il loro pranzo.
Whatever she is saying, it certainly isn't "nel". There is so much emphasis on a second syllable that the learner has to believe she is saying "nello" or "nella"...!!
It could, but it is like saying "the dinner of they" in English: technically the meaning is the same but it is wrong and sounds weird.
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Why the translation of nel here is “on” however it was mentioned in several examples before as “in”
Literal translation simply doesn't work with many prepositions. For us Italians things are in the plate, but English speakers will see it as on the plate, you simply will learn it by exercise
You'd be understood but it's that kind of strange that would leave you with a philosophical question, is it in or on? Jokes asides, in a reverse comparison, if someone said "your dinner is in the plate", you'd understand him as well but would feel that something's a little off, despite it not being a grammar tragedy.
