31 Comments
1077
It's frustrating when Duo demands a literal translation on one question, then marks a literal translation wrong on the next. :/
No offense but whoever does the voice in italian is BAD. She sounds depressed when she reads the sentences.
She's a robot and very sensitive that's why she always sounds like she's sobbing. :-)
In English we would usually say, "Do you want some fruit juice?". You could say, "Do you want a glass of fruit juice?" Juice is not measured by a number; therefore, we wouldn't say one fruit juice or two fruit juices.
- 913
I disagree, it's always about context. So if you had a some drinks in bottles and some milk, that would be fine. However, what is wrong with 'would you like a/some fruit juice' which is correct and far more polite?
“I want four beers for the parents, and six fruit juices for the kids.”.
Until now Italian had the reputation of having the worst oral. Believe it or not it's a little better. Yes, the inflection should go up but you don't lose a heart if you write affirmative. Just remember if you have to translate from English to Italian. If there is anyone new here (as I see from the levels) check out these sites.
http://www.duolingo.com/comment/1352379 http://duolingo.wikia.com/wiki/Frequently_asked_questions
Very important look at the bottom of each page for the Official guidelines.
Enjoy learning. And come back if you questions.
Why does it not accept "Would you like a fruit juice?"? In English it is very abrupt to say "Do you want?" The polite way of asking is "Would you like". Foreigns so often don't seem to get that. Or is the Italian "vorrei" abrupt, and is there therefore another way of being polite in Italian?
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I quite agree, davidwill1949. I'm surprised more people have not commented thus. But the Italian here is "vuoi", not "vorrai" or "vorresti" (let alone "vorrei" - I really don't know how to say "Would you like ... ?" in Italian.
“Would you [singular] like…” = «Vorresti…».
“Would you [plural] like…” = «Vorreste…».
Is this how you ask a question in Italian (e.g. by stating it) or is the intonation of this lady really off?
what does the word "di" represent here? I can say it means "with" while the peaking says it means: "about, sort or from" which doesn't make sense. Any explanations people?
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Ahmed - that drop-down is very misleading, ignore it. "Di" here means "of", which is its primary translation into English. Prepositions can be tricky to translate, but this is a fairly straightforward one - effectively it means a juice "made of" or "composed of" fruit.
Buon punto , infatti preferirei un succo di vedura invece , è non come dolce . This is just a peculiar phrase to an English speaker. In America, juice automatically means fruit juice unless otherwise specified.
Un/una can be translated as some. Do you want SOME fruit juice?
Such as, Avrai bisogno di UNA protezione per le orecchie / You need SOME ear protection. It is not you need AN ear protection, or you need ONE ear protection.
You should not lose a heart for using "some". This should be corrected.
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"Do you want a juice of fruit?" was marked wrong... Is this not acceptable in English?
It would be understood, but native speakers would not speak this way. We always say "chocolate bar" rather than "bar of chocolate".
- 913
Disagree. 'Juice of fruit' is not an English idiom, but 'bar of chocolate' is completely acceptable, and in common usage. Note: If in doubt you can always check the British National Corpus (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/) or the equivalent American Contemporary English (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/)
Thanks for posting these links. At the BYU site, "bar of chocolate" has a frequency score of 14, while "chocolate bar" is 231, so I guess it makes sense that I had never heard it phrased the first way. I'm curious if this usage is more common in the UK than here in the US, but I can't get the BNC link to work at present.
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For native English speakers it seems more natural, so regional, but one hears all variations in the media and on travels so ...
You're right - seems to be down for maintenance. There's another link here: http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ - 50 v 42
It's a useful resource, but it sometimes needs interpretation. We had an instance where someone was arguing an established (incorrect) use in the US v UK (spelling I think). It turned out that all the references, only in the US, had originated from one author who was writing articles about hunting :)
