"I have a dinner with him in January."
Translation:Ho una cena con lui a gennaio.
22 Comments
So when there is a phrase about time, such as "in January," should I generally use "a" instead of "in"? Or is there another reason why the correction translation is "a gennaio" and not "in gennaio"?
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‧ The Italian preposition "a" is generally used with names of the months to express the English preposition "in". ‧ A febbraio vado in Italia. In February I'm going to Italy ‧ Oggi In Italia ‧ books.google.com/books?isbn=1305545087 ‧
‧ forum.duolingo.com/comment/21832269/Prepositions-A-all-alla-alle-allo-agli-ad ‧
bloody italian,really gets me mad ,i still tend to write italian in an english context,but then i am an oldie and it is hard to shake a lifetime of english off
DL would not allow me to use cenare here - I don't see why? Ceno con lui a gennaio. Should be correct?
Yes, but why play with it? Just take what DL asked I have (ho) a dinner (una cena) then your answer would have been right. In time, the DL algorithms will catch up with all the alternatives rather than just a lot of them.
I do not see this as playing with it -we have learned cenare - to have dinner. It is a more efficient was of saying this! I agree there are many people on these forums that waste everyones time with playing with it - DL teaches you many stock phrases and if you stick to them you learn the patterns.
The problem you have is that the question DL posed was "to have a dinner" not "to have dinner"
In English there is no difference between to have a dinner and to have dinner. In Italian there may be since articles seem to express a lot in Italian but I do not know. DL did actually accept my Cenare option as good Italian. I do think io ceno and io ho una cena are basically the same thing from exploring it back in past lessons. Although Io ho la cena expresses something different.
An interesting debate we're having! However, having been a writer/journalist/broadcaster for many years, I cannot agree that have a dinner & have dinner are the same. In Italian, articles seem to have a somewhat flexible nature. But similarly, and for reasons I won't bore you with, io ceno does not strictly equal io ho una cena. Also, io ho la cena does equal io ceno. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Stammi bene e a presto professoressa!
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single event ‧ I am having a dinner at the club tomorrow as part of the fund raising gala ‧
multiple events ‧ I have dinner at home with the family every weekday ‧
