56 Comments
"We speak primarily of animals" was not accepted. It makes much more sense than "above all"
I want to say that it's because they're not saying "of the animals", their saying "of animals". That is my best guess!
1560
Coretti Briguy, I translated it as "of the animals" and lost a heart, the correction said "of animals"
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??
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.
I put "We are above all talking about animals" and got marked wrong for not putting "speaking". Shameful.
"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?
Does anyone think "overall" works as a translation for soprattutto? It wasn't accepted.
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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.
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".
I don't think they contract 'di' because it is not really an article, more like 'some of....
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.
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"?
Look at my response to Chaaaarlotjeeee (8 posts above) for a possible answer
