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- Topic: Italian >
- "Vediamo uccelli."
57 Comments
No, no; camilo0o0o actually asks a good question.
I mean, "Bevo l'acqua" is both "I drink water", and "I drink THE water".
"Bevo acqua" is, as far as I am concerned, ungrammatical. Why is "Vediamo uccelli" grammatical? Any italian around, please?
Well, I'm italian and I can say that the sentence is grammatically correct, but actually doesn't sound very "italian"... I mean, if I were in that situation I'd probably say "vediamo DEGLI uccelli" ... The sentence "vediamo GLI uccelli" means that you're seeing the specific birds that you were expecting to see, but if it is a casual event i think that "degli" (some) is the best option ;)
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What part of Italy? degli uccelli sounds grammatically very French to me, so I immediately jumped to the assumption (rightly or wrongly) that you are perhaps from the part of Italy near France.
I must admit that vediamo uccelli sounds wrong to American me because the number of birds would be countable - a limited number, even if a lot of them - so it's not exactly general in nature.
I've gotten the idea from the number of comments here by native-speakers that the rule regarding a required use of the article in Italian is changing - that forty years ago, it would have been required here, without question, but now, that's not so clear.
Same question. I seem to recall learning that unlike English, Italian always uses a definite or indefinite article with a noun. But it seems like Italian is more like English than I was told, because I keep coming across examples when the article is omitted and the meaning is different because of that omission. Fine - when the exception swallows the rule, you just accept it and move on.
Well, that'd be "we see the birds," and I guess Duolingo decided to leave out the "the" part of the sentence
I notice that when there is a vowel at the end of a word and at the beginning of the next word, the words kind of run into each other. It sounded like she said, "vediamo ccelli" instead of "vediamo uccelli". Is there a particular reason why? I hope my question is understandable
I'm no expert, but I think these elisions probably just happen when thousands of people speak quickly in a language over hundreds of years. It's not something intentional, it just naturally evolves so that things slip off the tongue more easily. It's probably similar to how contractions arose in English - after awhile, people saying "cannot" (two syllables) over and over found themselves saying "can't" (one syllable).
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Two thoughts on this topic, keeping in mind that the original comment was 4 years ago, and the audio has probably improved since then:
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When new to a language, a lot of people just don't hear things because those things are unexpected. The more familiar one becomes with a language, the more the ear can pick up.
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The more familiar one becomes with a language, the more one can anticipate what comes next, and even fill in things that are indeed missing. An example would be that you hear i uccelli, but realize that gli is required, so you mind fills it in, even if the "li" sound gets elided to i somehow.
I know that French employs liasons (sounds from the first word crossing into the following word). I would Imagine that liasons exist in one form or another in all of the Romance languages. But I would like to have this thought verified or dismissed by a linguist.
I don't know about other romance languages but there are contractions in Romanian too. It seems a bit like in English, only that there are more. For example, both "nu îmi" and "nu-mi" are grammatically correct.
It's Probably Just Natural, From It Being Pronounced Quickly. I Can't Think Of An y Off Hand, But I'm Sure There Are Examples Of This In English As Well.
I find it very difficult to understand this woman. The guy can speak clearly but all her 'e's and 'i's sound identical, her 'v' sounds like a 'd'. Many times her 'una' sounds the same as 'un' - completely dropping 'ah' sound. Very frustrating. Anyone else having issues with her?
What's the difference between vedere and guardare? I once used vedere in an answer and it told me it was wrong.
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vedere: to see
guadare: to watch or to look at.
You can see something in an instant and then look away. That's not "watching". "Lookin at" means casting one's glance in the direction of, but not necessarily seeing. "I looked at the crowd of women, but I did not see my wife."
Can someone please tell me what the verb is? And then the conjugation of it? Thank you!!
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Vedere ( to see). Try this website: https://www.italian-verbs.com/italian-verbs/conjugation.php?parola=vedere
So how would you say the ducks? I know the duck is l'anatra but to say the ducks would you say le anatre or gli anatri? But for the latter you would be then giving it a masculine ending! Help Please?
"Le anatre" = "the ducks". Anatra is feminine and has to have the feminine plural ending (swap the a to an e) and the feminine plural "the" which is "le". I might be over-simplifying, but that's the general idea.
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Note that, with plurals, you never turn them into contractions. Before a vowel, la and lo become l', but the plural article is always either le, i or gli.
Second note: It's lo which becomes l', not il. You can reach that conclusion only indirectly. Words that begin with z, gn, and s + [consonant] take lo/gli, so it follows that a word which takes gli in the plural (masculine nouns beginning with a vowel) also take lo in the singular. Thus, l' is short for lo/la, and il is never made into a contraction because it never appears before a word beginning with a vowel.
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I lived in Kansas for 30+ years. The closest I've come to a tornado was when we moved to North Carolina, and an F 0.5 hit about 3 miles from our house. No basements or storm shelters here, either.
While there is a discussion about the grammar here, this was a listening exercise for me. I was asked to type what I heard. I did not type what I heard (Vediamo uccelli). I added the gli and it was appropriately counted wrong because I was wrong.
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There is no “go” in the sentence. Let’s see the birds would also be vediamo gli uccelli, but, “let’s GO see the birds” would be: Andiamo a vedere gli uccelli.
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I have gotten this answer wrong three times because I didn't realize that the autocorrect had changed see to are! Is there something that could be done to take this into account?
I thought I'd get around the lack of a word for "the" in the Italian by choosing the second definition for uccelli found when hovering over the word-- fowl-- and was marked wrong. I thought that would cover the need for a plural noun.
I wrote "We look at birds" and I got it wrong. It's basically the same as "We see birds."
I think that "to look at" is a better translation for the verb "guardare", that implies that you're paying attention to the birds, but "vedere" indicates quite a casual action, that is "the birds were passing by and we saw them".
Looking at means you are doing something for a period of time. See something applys to a spacific moment. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Why is duolingo just throwing these unknown, never taught words out? How am i supposed to know the meaning of a word I never heard (saw) before? Where did this lousy method of teaching come from? Its basically saying, "here ya go, fail"
I find it very useful in my learning process. I can learn new words that are part of a sentence and that makes me think of the new word and its use (which helps me to retain the information). At the same time, I have a notebook in which I write everything down in an organized manner so I don't forget it and the verbs are making sense while the units progress.
The good thing about DL is that you can always put the cursor on the word and that will give you the translation so I don't need a dictionary. Sometimes it will also give you the conjugation.
I got so discouraged when all the food vocab. and then the animal vocab. was thrown at me and I feel it happening now with all these verbs. I wish they would give us the verbs and conjugations in the notes section. So frustrated!!
That doesn't matter. If an answer is correct (which I'm not sure if this one is, I haven't learnt past tense yet, but the same thing happens in Spanish which has a lot of similarities) then DL will mark it as correct regardless of which section you are in. If not, then report it and they will eventually correct it.
You often get questions that do not appear in the 'correct' sections because one word has more than one meaning and DL picks a question because of the word that is used, although it does not fit the section that is being taught with that meaning...I don't know my Italian well enough yet to quote an example, although I do know that I've encountered one of these recently.
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Sure, but the verb is in present tense, whatever section we're in. "we saw" is wrong just the same as if it were translated, "they see". It's just not the right answer, which is absolutely clear.
(American English speaker) "we saw" would be noi abbiamo visto, a different verb form.
Wouldn't that be "we have seen"? Which is similar, but not the same. Sorry but my Italian is still very poor at the moment, I've only been learning for a couple of weeks.
There are several different types of past tense, and each verb has a different conjugation for each past tense. The past tense conjugations are always different from the present tense forms. You should be patient until you learn the forms (you'll drive yourself crazy otherwise), however you can always look them up at a conjugation website like this:
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Vediamo only means we see/are seeing and Let’s see. We “saw” would be abbiamo veduto and yes Italian uses this tense (passato prosaico) to mean “saw, did see and have seen. This is the most common way to say “saw” unless you mean “used to see” in which case vedevamo would be correct. Italian past tense use is mysterious, but not without rules. Spanish and Italian are not comparable here.
