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- "I eat chocolate ice cream."
"I eat chocolate ice cream."
Translation:Mangio il gelato al cioccolato.
July 14, 2013
30 Comments
That's exactly it. When you are talking about the generic idea, you use an article. That tells people you are talking about the general idea of something. "Mangio il gelato" just means "I eat ice cream". Similar concepts are used when saying "I like sports" [Mi piace lo sport] or "I like cats" [mi piace il gatto].
Because it is not literal translation of English. Nouns in Italian require an article before, therefore, you should put the article (il) before the noun (gelato). Chocolate ice cream translates as gelato al cioccolato because it is ice cream with chocolate in it, it is not made of chocolate (not in the sense of it being its base). A substitute in English could be chocolate flavoured ice cream.