- Forum >
- Topic: Italian >
- "Parliamo soprattutto di anim…
66 Comments
I want to say that it's because they're not saying "of the animals", their saying "of animals". That is my best guess!
2100
Coretti Briguy, I translated it as "of the animals" and lost a heart, the correction said "of animals"
- 497
It wasn't just now (6/30/18) when i wrote "degli animali." Could it be accepted as an English translation but not as Italian??
"We speak primarily of animals" was not accepted. It makes much more sense than "above all"
There is a very good explanation (in Italian, but easy to read) here http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/raddoppiamento-sintattico_(La_grammatica_italiana)/
According to this source, we should double many consonants at the beginning of words while pronouncing them, and when such a word is written together with the previous word (as in sopra + tutto = soprattutto) the doubling is also reflected in spelling. The cause is the dropping in Italian of many consonants at the end of Latin words, and those consonants remain there to an extent at the beginning of the next word (e.g. a ccasa, tre ggatti, già ffatto). This is a very short summary of the page. For me, the information helps improve the pronunciation (I used to say a casa, tre gatti, etc, no doubling, which I now understand is wrong)
I'd like to know that, too. Duolingo corrected my spelling and called it a typo.
As far as I can tell, DuoLingo accepts "we mainly talk..." and "we talk mostly...", but NOT "we mostly talk..." Is there a reason for this, or is it just a translation they need to add?
To me "we mostly talk... " and "we talk mostly ..." are almost the same.
"We mostly talk about animals" means, most of the time we talk about animals, but sometimes we go swimming and don't even talk. Do something completely different, not talking.
"We talk mostly about animals" means we talk about animals most times but sometimes we talk about food. But we always talk.
Not a big difference. Very subtle.
"above all" is correct but if you add "else" (which is what I would normally do - does not alter the meaning one jot) then it becomes incorrect. Why does answering these questions feel like mind-reading sometimes?
I put "We are above all talking about animals" and got marked wrong for not putting "speaking". Shameful.
I don't think they contract 'di' because it is not really an article, more like 'some of....
That's just not an elision that's used in Italian. There isn't a similar vowel sound following, so there's no need to drop the "i" from "di".
Does anyone think "overall" works as a translation for soprattutto? It wasn't accepted.
Makes zero sense, this level of adverbs has some terrible translations, in both directions, in nearly every lesson.
Dear Gods! I want to report this but the option isn't there. This is horrible on so many levels.
Is the following not good English? "First of all we talk about animals." Thank you for teaching me English ;-)
Could also be: Lets talk (parliamo) above all (sopratutto) of animals (di animali), but should be degli animali (of the animals)
"We are speaking mainly about animals" rejected 3/1/16. "Mainly" is even offered as one of the hover hints. Oh well.
If they are going to do this, assuming it is the most accurate translation for the word soprattutto, we need commas.... We speak, above all, about animals.....this current translation makes no sense.
Why not 'we speak mainly of animals'? The "correct" translation is clunky and not something one would ever hear an English speaker say.
I'm not sure. "Above all" sounds more intense than "mainly". I wrote "especially" which sounds to me somewhere between "above all" and "mainly". I guess it depends if Italian also has similar levels of intensity. The Collins Italian-English dictionary gives "above all" and "especially" as translations of "soprattutto", and "principalmente" for "mainly".
"Speaking of" something is a little bit stilted/anachronistic for most English speakers. It's not wrong, but it definitely shouldn't be a recommended translation over "speaking/talking about".
Thank you. This makes more sense and is less awkward to an English speaker.
This has to be the worst translation by duolingo. Nothing wrong surely with talks instead of speak, or mainly instead of above all - both wrong apparently. Only confuses.
What is wrong about using mainly? In other similar sentences, mainly is used.
DL, please admit and fix this English sentence. there is clearly something wrong about it.
OK, I get that "above all" is a more literal translation of the components of the adverb, but "mainly" should be close enough.
what the heck does that even mean?! "We speak above all of animals." it should probably say, "we speak above all of the animals."
This is a painful translation, it makes no sense at all in English, please Mods, do something about it!!!
The verb is "parliamo," so "we" is the only appropriate subject for the English sentence.
Why does DL sometimes translate "soprattutto" as "mainly" and sometimes as "mostly"? And what is the correct usage of "principalmente"?
It's not technically wrong, but it's an odd phrasing in English. A native speaker would likely never "speak of" something. It's much more common to "talk about" things.
Is word order important in this sentence, specifically as it relates to "sopratutto"? In English you can say "Mainly we speak about animals", "We mainly speak about animals", "We speak mainly about animals", "We speak about mainly animals", or "We speak about animals mainly" and they're all more or less correct, understood, and equal in meaning. Is it the same in Italian, or does "soppratutto" have a specific required placement in the sentence?
"Sopratutto" could probably go at the beginning of the sentence, but that's about it.
However, it's not that different in English. As you said, although some of your options would be understood in English, they're only "more or less" correct. Your last two options ("about mainly animals" and "about animals mainly") hit the ear wrong and shouldn't be offered as good translations.
"we are mainly talking about the animals" not accepted...but should be :-{
If the Italian sentence said "di animali," yes, because in that case, the Italian could only be referring to the concept of animals, not a specific group of animals (which is what "the animals" would imply in English).
You can't include "the" in the English sentence, because the Italian sentence clearly isn't referring to a definite set of animals. If the Italian sentence used "degli animali," then I think it could go either way; but since the Italian omits the article, the English version has to as well.
