"Le donne pranzano al ristorante."
Translation:The women have lunch at the restaurant.
133 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
It's like Spanish: almorzar is for lunch (almuerzo), while cenar is to have dinner.
Technically, 'nel ristorante' would be OK, but it's like you don't say: I dine in my friend's place, but 'at my friend's place'. When you dine 'nel ristorante' you are stressing that you will be eating inside, not in the 'giardino' or on the terrace...
al restorante is at the restaurant, whereas in the restaurant is nel. We don't say in the restaurant in correct English!
So...lunch is a verb in Italian? Interesting. Is there a noun form and is it different?
"lunch" is also a verb in English. A bit formal but perfectly correct.
As a point of clarification:
In English, "dinner" can be the lunch time meal or the evening meal (see http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/dinner), so "we dine" "we eat dinner" could mean we eat in the evening or at midday.
In Italian, "cena" is always the evening meal, so "ceniamo" means "we have dinner" in the sense of "we eat the evening meal". "Pranzo" is always the midday meal, so "pranziamo" means "we have dinner" in the sense of "we eat the midday meal".
Duolingo ONLY accepts "have dinner" for cenare, and NEVER for prenzare, probably to try and make this distinction clear (even though "have dinner" would translate both in reality).
Actually... for most people the midday meal is lunch and the evening meal is dinner. One can lunch or dine. Some people call lunch "dinner" and dinner "tea" (which is often eaten somewhat earlier than "dinner") but they know that it is their custom, and that a more conventional choice of words is used by others. It is an English "class" thing and adhered to with determination. A family member or friend using "lunch" and "dinner" appropriately could be thought of as "getting above him/herself". Ok. Lesson over!
Yes, my English husband told me that dinner was the main meal of the day, whether at midday or evening. Lunch was midday when not main meal, and night time was supper.
In English, "dinner" can be the lunch time meal or the evening meal (see http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/dinner)
From Collins:
- a meal taken in the evening
- a meal taken at midday, esp when it is the main meal of the day; lunch
Because "eats" is for he/she (3rd person singular) and "le donne" is 3rd person plural: "they".
In English, nothing.
But Italian does not share the idiom with English. In Italian, "to have lunch" can only be taken literally: "to possesses the meal".
But it says 'have lunch' is the correct answer, whereas 'eat lunch' is apparently incorrect
ok why is pranzano to "have lunch" when cena is to "eat dinner" i put "have" l'uomo cena, the men have dinner, this was apparently incorrect?
It should have been accepted. Next time that happens, flag it and report it.
i put cena as to have dinner it was wrong, you wanted to eat dinner. so i put, pranzano as eat lunch it was wrong you wanted to " have lunch"?
It should have been accepted. Next time that happens, flag it and report it.
When I click on the sentence at the top "Le donne pranzano al ristorante" It shows Spanish and US flags. This is not Spanish!
That is an interesting glitch. We should screenshot that and submit a bug report.
https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204728264-How-do-I-report-a-bug-
I think that the translation is wrong and is suppose to say "The woman HAS lunch at the restaurant." not "The woman HAVE lunch at the restaurant." My first langue is English and I am pretty sure the way I wrote it is right but, if I am wrong please let me know.
(PS. Sorry for all of incorrect spelling and or punctuation.)
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"Le donne pranzano al ristorante" can this statement be translated as "The women eat lunch at the restaurant" instead of "The women have lunch at the restaurant"?
It is so confusing "AL ristorante" because that is what you use for food "te al limone". It should be "nel ristorante".
"al" is used idiomatically for describing certain foods. It's not exclusive to that.
Al is also used to describe ingredients of foods, eg. Torta al cioccolato
Because "dine" specifically means "to eat dinner" and the sentence says "lunch".
I know how restaurant is spelled, but every time I type it, it is wrong. Duolingo won't except my answer because it is misspelled. I'm never too far off, however, and they usually except my other spelling errors. ARGH!
Yes. It can also mean "to the".
https://www.thoughtco.com/articulated-prepositions-in-italian-4056547
la donna is singular
le donne is plural
io pranzo
tu pranzi
lui/lei pranza
noi pranziamo
voi pranzate
loro pranzano
Because "to eat" is more generic: "mangiare".
"Pranzare" is specifically "to eat lunch".
"To have lunch" means "to eat lunch" in English, yes, but not in Italian.
I wrote the correct answer and was marked incorrectly.... How can I do to pass this and keep continue with the module
I tried to paste a screenshot and app didn't let me... There any other way?
I know that "al" is "a + il", but what is the translation in english for "al"?
why can't I say ladies instead of women? I use both interchangeably in English.
Because Italian is not English. You can't apply the rules of one to the other.
Donne and she writes queen. I answer it. But it was wrong. How come?
Those are secondary definitions that aren't appropriate here. The primary definition of "donna/donne" is "woman/women".
Can this also be translated as "have lunch in the restaurant"? I realise that "al" and "nel'' are different in Italian, however in English I often say "I'm eating lunch in restaurant A", as opposed to restaurant B.
Is "al" always for a definite article? It would not accept "at a restaurant" only "the."
That's right. al is a contraction of a+il, and il is "the", which is very different from "a/an".
ladies is an acceptable translation here. Particularly since we have the semi comic reference to "ladies who luncheon". Duo said it should be women!
I find this all quite odd; la prima colazione = breakfast; la colazione = lunch; il pranzo - dinner; pranzare = to dine; la cena =supper; Why are these being marked wrong? - I keep leaving messages but there's no feed back; I've started to ignore these questions.
Duolingo uses Standard American English and Standard Italian, and in these dialects, the mid-day meal is il pranzo = lunch and the evening meal is la cena = dinner. In different Italian dialects, "colazione" can be breakfast or lunch.
Both "a restaurant" and "the restaurant" are natural in English, but which one you use depends on what you mean.
a/an is the indefinite article. You use it when you're being non-specific. "She is at a restaurant. I don't know which one."
the is the definite article. You use it when you're being specific. "She is at the restaurant. You know which one."
al is literally "at the".
i wrote "the women eats lunch at the restaurant" and it was wrong. This is very weird. On some translations in duolingo its okay with "eats" or "have" but not on this one?
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"The women" is a plural phrase and so it needs a plural form of the verb - in this case, it would be "the women EAT" not "eats".
What i ment was that according to Duolingo the "only" correct answer is "the women have lunch at the restaurant".
But in other sentences where they use the words "pranzano,ceniamo" etc, they allow the word "eat/eats" instead of the word "have".
Not on this one, which makes it a tad annoying when the answers varies from sentence to sentence. It makes things more difficult to try to find some logic in the language.
Had a different sentence earlier about the word "suoi" wich can mean "his,her or hers" but according to duolingo the only correct answer to "i suoi pantaloni" was "his pants"
I had to check this with my gf (she's from Rome) found this a bit odd apart from all the nice useful sentences that you learn :P
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I suspect the key here is that Duolingo requires the word "lunch" to appear in the translation, as the Italian verb used is pranzare (as opposed to cenare which means to have/eat dinner). So to translate pranzano simply as "eat" does not convey the full meaning of the Italian word. I have no idea whether Duolingo would allow "eat lunch", in addition to "have lunch" - if not, they should.
Is the 'ano' in 'pranzano' not pronounced as written? The lady in the recording says 'pranze'.
It's a bad computer voice. I can hear the "ano" pronounced (as it should be), but the volume dips for some reason.
Le donne = the women => they
io pranzo = I eat lunch
tu pranzi = you eat lunch
lui/lei pranza = he/she eats lunch
noi pranziamo = we eat lunch
voi pranzate = y'all eat lunch
loro pranzano = they eat lunch
http://www.italian-verbs.com/italian-verbs/conjugation.php?parola=pranzare
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I said ladies instead of women and it said that was wrong. I don't see the difference.
Im a bit upset because I accidentally switched tge words, at and the. So why couldnt that have counted it was a mistake.
Does anyone else hear, "Le donne pranze mal ristorante?" I know it doesn't make any sense, but even after it corrected me I still didn't hear the woman right.
It is common practice to say "take lunch" as well as "have lunch". We see no distinction between them, both are treated as equal. Again an idiomatic usage that needs inclusion.
The woman has lunch.
The women have lunch.
La donna = the woman
Le donne = the women
The woman has lunch.
The women have lunch.
La donna = the woman
Le donne = the women
Though not used much in recent years "lunch" is a verb. "Have lunch" is preferable. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lunch? lunch verb : to eat lunch
It's the same with Spanish too.
The noun Lunch = almuerzo is one of the several conjugations of the verb almorzar = to have lunch:
(Yo) almuerzo = I have lunch
Él/Ella almuerza = He/She has lunch.
Same goes for breakfast (el desayuno) and dinner (la cena) too.
Perhaps, this is one the reasons a definite article almost always precedes them (when being used as nouns) even though in English we won't. Maybe, the same is true for Italian as well.
It's kind of the other way around. Spanish, Italian, and French use articles more than English does because that's just how their grammar works. And so because of that they say "il pranzo" and "la cena."
No, I don't get your other way around part. I'm already of the same opinion that Latin-based languages use articles more than English. I was just trying to reason why they might have done so and I know I maybe wrong. Perhaps, that's why I used "Perhaps".
I am just born more inquisitive and "that's just how it works" doesn't work for me always.
The best I can come up with in regards to using a definite article to convey an indefinite situation is to compare it to English (which is a Germanic language). We can say "The cat is an animal" to mean all of cat-dom as opposed to just one particular cat.
If the Romance languages can be thought of as sister languages, and the Germanic languages can be thought of as sister languages, then Romance and Germanic languages can be though of as cousins, since they're all Indo-European languages. It's entirely possible this tendency is ancient.
Inquisitiveness is a wonderful thing, but sometimes there is no easy answer to "why," especially when dealing with how a language works. I have a BA in linguistics and I have a passing familiarity with the histories of some languages. It's a fascinating subject to me. It's possible to learn how a language evolved from point A to point C through point B, and you can describe the phenomena involved in the process in great detail. When discussing the Romance languages, you can point back to Latin and say "Here is where it began," if you accept Latin as an arbitrary starting point instead of, say, Proto-Indo-European. But when pressed for why any given language is the way it is, even the most genius, most highly educated expert can only say "It just is; that's just how it developed." Language is a very complicated phenomenon.
Well, my idea of the definite articles preceding the words because they're being used as verbs when alone seemed plausible to me. But, given I probably don't even know 10% of the language, I certainly won't bet on it now. :)
I do understand that since the languages have had a myriad of different influences, the words evolved differently and you can't question why French went this way and Italian that. That's just the way it happened and all we can do is to document it.
But, whenever I see a grand unifying theme of some sorts, there's usually a reason behind it. That's what makes me feel that perhaps there must be a reason why all the romance languages felt it was natural to use definite articles even when the intent is to communicate the indefinite.