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- "The woman writes to the boys…
"The woman writes to the boys."
Translation:La donna scrive ai ragazzi.
20 Comments
583
To be more specific: "al"=a+il, while "ai"=a+i
You use "ai" on "ragazzi" because it takes the "i" definite article.
"zii" (uncles), for example, is also plural, but you use "agli"(=a+gli) on it as a prepositional article.
Similarly, you say "allo zucchero", "all'uovo" (both singular), etc.
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The same goes for all other prepositional articles:
• nel=in+il, nella=in+la, nello=in+lo, negli=in+gli..
• del=di+il, delle=di+le, degli=di+gli..
• sul=su+il, sull'=su+l', sui=su+i..
In Italian when you have a group of all girls, you use ragazze. If it's all boys or a mix of boys and girls you use ragazzi.
This goes for all group words in Italian. A group of 5 women and 1 man is grammatically masculine. Without context you wouldn't immediately know whether there are girls in the group or not.
364
"ai" means "a + i" so you if you put "ai i ragazzi" that is like saying "a i i ragazzi" or "to the the boys". Hope this helps! :)
302
I just translated ragazzi as boys and was corrected from boys to children . Now boys is correct!