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- "È più facile di quello che c…
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1095
È più facile = It is easier
di quello = than this
che credevo = that I believed/thought
It is easier than this that i thought
~ It's easier than I thought
- 396
When I would like to say - it's easier yhen i thought ---- can it be just --- E piu facile di credevo ??
No. Italian requires explicit comparisons, whereas English gets away with implicit ones a lot (for example, "See the above explanations"; above where? above here).
In this sentence, "di quello" is the explicit comparison "than that" (idiomatic translation, not literal). "che" acts to connect separate clauses. I think of it as a kind of glue in Italian sentences.
"E' piu' facile (it is more easy) di quello (than that (thing)) che (which/that) credevo (I used to believe)."
If you actually used the word 'then' in your translation, that's the problem. You wanted 'than.'
- 1530
In the exercise going from English to Italian, the "correct" answer is given as È più facile di quanto pensassi - in subjunctive tense, before we get to the subjunctive module. And there is no che in that sentence. One user commented that Duo accepted di quanto ho pensato.
Obviously, an error of some sort is happening with this particular sentence. Very confusing.
'It is easier than I thought it would be' - and I thought it worth spelling out!
I would think it is incorrect because you have used a conditional clause.
Because while in English we say thought, it's referring to a belief, pensavo refers to the act of thinking as opposed to a belief, which is credevo
- 1530
Pronunciation of quello seems to vary a bit:
https://forvo.com/word/quello/#it
One Italian uses a kind of "a" sound: "Quayl-lo" (like the audio female voice here), while the other uses a short "e": "Quehl-lo"
Credere is the root present tense, in the past tense it changes, just like in English we use believe and believed
"It is easier than that, I believe." Would this be an acceptable translation?
I'm seeing di quello and che as separate ways of saying "than" but not when put together? Is this actually grammatically correct?
It’s really just the “di” that means “than.” “Che” by itself can mean “than” in different contexts, but here it’s a relative pronoun:
È più facile... It’s easier...
È più facile di quello... It’s easier than that (thing)...
È più facile di quello che credevo. It’s easier than that thing that I believed.
In English that sounds super awkward, though, so we say, “It’s easier than I thought/believed.” In Italian you need all of the stuff in between, though.
- 1369
In the expression "di quello che" di = than, quello = that, and che = which. So , "è più facile di quello che credevo" can be translated literally as "it is easier than that which I thought." In Italian, "that which" is required; in English it is omitted. By the way "ciò che" can be substituted for "quello che."
Personally, I think that is actually a better way to translate this sentence, though I also feel there is a significant difference between believing and thinking. I think that distinction is really only important in American settings as we tend to have a severe problem with separating believe and thought.
Typo above due to auto correction (more aggravation). Di quello seems superfluous, since che means than.
I think "È più facile che credevo" it's not correct in italian.
"Di quello" means "of what" here. So, literally, it means: "It is easier than (the thing) I thought".
