105 Comments
Is anyone else thinking Taylor Swift here? "Lei porta le gonne corte, porto una maglietta."
The sentence literally means "TO her the short skirts are pleasing". "a lei" means to her. 'Piacere' means 'to please'; it doesn't directly translate into the English 'to like' which is why it gets confusing. Hope this helps!
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@Sassicat I wrote " To her the short skirts are pleasing" and Duo broke my heart XD
According to the tutors on here, "Piacere" is not so much "to like" as it is "to be pleasing to". So you think of it as "To her, short skirts are pleasing".
I thought like that: "Le gonne corte piacciono a lei." I don't know if it is correct, but ...
I meant the indirect object "le", not the article. "Le piacciono le gonne corte." The word "le" as an indirect object literally means "a lei".
Certo! I had understood your idea. I only used the direct order... I am thinking...Mi piace...Ti piace.... Le piace...Le piacciono!
You could use either "a lei" or "le" (indirect object pronoun) with this sentence. They are both grammatically correct. "A lei" emphasizes more strongly that it is her who likes them. When you translate it back to Italian, both are accepted. This sentence is introduced before the section with indirect object pronouns, though, so the default is "a lei."
why wouldn't "lei piace le gonne corte" work here? Also, how does the "they" form of piace fit in here?
"They" refers to the short skirts. Translate it as "The short skirts please her."
Remember that 'the short skirts are pleasing TO her' which is why you say 'A lei' at the start of the sentence.
Changing the order we understand better...See: Le gonne corte piacciono a lei.
why is it piacciono and not piace if its just one girl we're talking about, surely piacciono is for loro?
Already answered just above. (Reading the other comments first will often answer your question). Piacere means 'to be pleasing' So here it says 'to her the short skirts are pleasing' or 'The short skirts are pleasing to her'. So since the skirts are the thing that is doing the acting, the pleasing, the conjugation is with them, rather than with her. And since the short skirts are plural it's piacciono.
For more on piacere and other verbs that act like it see http://italian.about.com/od/verbs/a/italian-verb-piacere.htm
Ok, so if I'm not referring to her as being part of a group, The sentence would then read: Lei piace le gonne corte?
I selected what I thought were two correct answers using "breve" and "corte" for "short". Duolingo only accepts "breve".
I made the same mistake so I looked it up in my dictionary and it says "corto" is used for length "breve" for length/distance, time and duration and for brief. So that is why "corto" was not accepted for a book.
since "piacere" is followed by the plural: "le gonne" you should use the plural form "piacciono" Or did you mean using or not using "le"? I think you can leave it out, but it is more common to use the article.
No, perhaps you should have read the comments. http://italian.about.com/od/verbs/a/italian-verb-piacere.htm piacere does not mean 'to like' it means 'to be pleasing', so "To her is pleasing the short skirts", the closest equivalent in colloquial English being 'she likes short skirts.'
Already covered extensively in the comments, but in brief, it's because the skirts (plural) are the things doing the pleasing so the conjugation is with them and thus piacciono - they are pleasing. If you actually read the rest of the comments you will find links to pages explaining it more fully. Advice for the future, always read the thread first, it's a good bet your question has already been asked and answered if it's a fairly long thread.
This sentance is not correct. It should be "she is pleased by short skirts." Piaccono does not mean "likes".
Piacere does NOT mean "to please": it's a good mnemonic trick to get used to the sentence structure, but "a lei piacciono" really only means "she likes [them]".
The first word in the hint was "you" Why is it wrong to say you like short skirts?
a few minutes ago I was marked wrong for putting 'le ragazze speciale' and was told it should be 'speciali' because the plural of feminine words ended with 'i'. Here, 'le gonne corte' finishes with an 'e' and not and ''i'
1)The adjective "corte" is the plural of "corta". 2)"Speciale" is another case. Adjectives ending in -e are the same in masculine and feminine. Both form the plural in -i. Hence "speciali".
I like t shirts, SHE'S CHEER CAPTAIN AND I'M ON THE BLEACHERS - Taylor Swift
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Literally: Short Skirts ARE PLEASING to her. SKIRTS is PLURAL. Thus, the 3rd person plural of piacere is indicated/required. In conversation, if you made a mistake and said piace, the listener would get the gist of your meaning but how forgiving of your grammar they would be remains to be seen. THE SKIRTS (THEY/piacciono) are pleasing to her. http://www.wordreference.com/conj/itverbs.aspx?v=piacere
How about reading all the other comments... It has been explained over and over again. See for example the explanation two lines below... ;)
Because if you'd read my link or my comment you would have seen piacere is governed by the thing that is doing the pleasing, not the person being pleased. A lei - to her (though Le would work just as well since that = A lei, though A lei might be said for emphasis) To her the short skirts are pleasing.
No, piacere works a bit differently. It doesn't translate as 'like' but 'is pleasing', so 'To her is pleasing the short skirts' since the things doing the pleasing, the subject are the short skirts then the piacere goes to piacciono in conjugation since it is they who are doing the pleasing. There are a few verbs that work like this. http://italian.about.com/od/verbs/a/italian-verb-piacere.htm
Couldn't it also by translated as "she likes skirts short"? As in "she likes skirts to be short".
Because of the way emphasis works that would be usually "A lei le gonne piacciono corte", but it's true that you can do the same without changing the word order by changing your tone appropriately.
