"The boy eats an apple."
Translation:Il ragazzo mangia una mela.
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Yes, but this only with nouns, adjectives and co but not with verbs. Verbs don't have the gender distinction: Io mangio is I eat both if I am a boy or a girl. Similarly he and she have the same coniugation, so both un ragazzo and una ragazza will have "mangia".
The verb to eat (regular 1st coniugation):
Io mangio 1st sing. Tu mangi 2nd sing. Lui/egli mangia 3rd sing. masc. Lei/ella mangia 3rd sing. fem. Esso/essa mangia 3rd sing inanimate masc and fem (the italian for "it", both masculine and feminine) Noi mangiamo 1st plu. Voi mangiate 2nd plu. Loro/essi/esse mangiano 3rd plu.
Yes, but this only with nouns, adjectives and co but not with verbs. Verbs don't have the gender distinction: Io mangio is I eat both if I am a boy or a girl. Similarly he and she have the same coniugation, so both un ragazzo and una ragazza will have "mangia".
The verb to eat (regular 1st coniugation):
Io mangio 1st sing. Tu mangi 2nd sing. Lui/egli mangia 3rd sing. masc. Lei/ella mangia 3rd sing. fem. Esso/essa mangia 3rd sing inanimate masc and fem (the italian for "it", both masculine and feminine) Noi mangiamo 1st plu. Voi mangiate 2nd plu. Loro/essi/esse mangiano 3rd plu.
In English there are almost no occasions when the articles or verbs have to match gender because in English the ONLY words that have gender are ones that apply to humans: man, woman, girl, boy, gentleman, lady. All the rest of the words in English have no gender. So one can just use the word "the" with no modification - the boy, the man, the girl, the lady. There is no gender attached to nouns so the articles in front of nouns do not need to match gender. Therefore the only words that need to match with gender are pronouns, (he and she)possessives (his, hers).
Even the words "a" or "an" have nothing to do with the gender of the noun it precedes. The use of "a" or "an" depends only on the letter of the word it precedes. So it is "a machine", an infirmary, a boy, a man, a girl, a lady, an impostor, an ambulance. If a word begins with a vowel in English is it preceded by "an" and this has nothing to do with gender.
As a fluent German speaker, I can totally see how it would be confusing to learn. ;) But in a way, it helps me conceptionally understand Italian better. If I only knew English, it would be more difficult to grasp the idea of having genders on objects and words. But, the genders assigned to things in German don't match up with the Italian, which makes it a little more confusing. For example, in Italian: La Mala (feminine) in German: Der Apfel (masculine)
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Does anyone else have problems with answering with the correct sentence and duolingo saying it is incorrect? (And then saying the correct answer, which is exactly the same as the one you typed)
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When do I use "una" instead of "la"? Since in this case I used "la mela" instead of "una mela" and I was wrong, so I'm not sure as to when I should use which one under what circumstance.
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It's l'uomo because when there's a double vowel like lo uomo, they drop the another vowel and it becomes l'uomo. L' is used with masculine, singular words that start with a vowel. The same is done with feminine words La = L', when there's a double vowel.