"Io ho un serpente nello stivale."

Translation: I have a snake in my boot.

[Screechymi]

Toy Story!!

[John.Burgess]

"Io ho un serpente nello mio stivale?" Is that correct?

[Umaer]

No it's not. If you want to use mio then you cannot use nello as it preceed the nouns starting with 's or z'.

[Jaliloo1]

So how could you know to whom the boot belong?

[MikeJohnErick]

I believe in Italian it depends on the circumstance, but by default it is the person's who "has" the snake. By saying "lei ha un serpente nello stivale," that would by default mean "she has a snake in her boot."

[MadelynWri]

Also you don't need to say "mio" as (in Italian) it's implied. :)

[Euhan1]

"nel mio stivale"

[GraemeJeal]

Nel mio stivale accepted.

[Abrajan93]

To the infinity and beyond!

[MelissaM1212]

That needs to be a sentence next.

[willcan]

In Australian English this could mean that you have a snake in the back of your car.
Boot = trunk (in American English).

[a__girl]

And British English.

[MrSunshine251]

Not quite. The boot of a car, or trunk for the Americans, is "Bagagliaio".

"Stivali" specifically means footwear boots.

[Sinax_Sinax]

So what do you call footwear "boot"?

[cadenciorum402]

So you don't need "my" before boot? Because this is literally I have snake in boot...would "Io ho un serpente nel mio stivale" also be okay?

[forsilvia]

In Italian you use possessive adjective before clothes only if it is necessary "I'm wearing the jacket" (not MY jacket) but "I'm wearing your jacket"

[seapesco]

So that's why you need the knife in the other one!

[SuarezMary]

You get a lingot for being clever! You're my kind of person!

[patito_ail]

Hai un amico in me!!

[bjm427791]

shouldn't the translation be 'I have a snake in the boot", not 'my boot'? I didn't see any 'mio' in the sentence.

[CraigPickering]

I said snake on the boot and it was wrong. but 'nel piatto' means on the plate?

[GuyNachims]

In italian you say nel piatto: it is literally "in the plate" but in English you use "on the plate" more often. Perhaps the plates tend to be deeper in Italy :)

[Katiemullins1]

but that doesn't answer why it would not be "ON the boot" compared to "IN the boot" because you can have things on your shoes that are not inside your shoes. Sometimes I have mud or a bug ON my shoes but not IN my shoes (thank god). Semantically, could both IN and ON have been correct in this boot case? If not, how would you say "I have a snake ON my boot" ?

[Strickster]

"on the" translates to "sul", while "in the" translates to "nel".

[xyphax]

correct!

two good and easy charts for prepositions

http://italian.about.com/library/fare/blfare114a.htm

http://italian.about.com/library/fare/blfare153a.htm

[Denis576024]

I don't see the word my in italian?

[blueberyz]

why "i have a snake in boot" doesnt work? where is the word "my" hiding in the question?

[ClaudeMedearis]

Partly because "nello" means "in the" and not just "in". So you at least need the "the" to make a coherent English sentence.
But as a previous commentor said, the "my" is implied because Italian doesn't use possessives for clothing unless you're specifying whose item it is. If there is no possessive it is accepted that you're talking about your own item.

[AnettOrosz]

"Nel mio stivale"

[Kartagis]

This sentence literally means "I have a snake in the boot". Why is it not accepted and "I have a snake in my boot" accepted when its meaning is "Io ho un serpente nel mio stivale"?

[ShurendelE]

Is "stivale" not plural?

[ClaudeMedearis]

I had the same problem. The final "e" is feminine as a plural but masculine as a single unless it's feminine, like "l'ape" at which point I run screaming into the street.
Genders are killing me. I guess I just have to memorize the gender of words with ambiguous endings.

[Muttley_]

That's why you have the article.
"nello"= "in + lo", that is the article for nouns of the masculine gender (why "lo stivale" is masculine and "la scarpa"is feminine is beyond the scope of this course :-) ). Therefore the word following it must also be masculine.

[t3212]

Or how dress is masculine (il vestito).... or "skirt" in German is masculine (der Rock). Probably an interesting story somewhere about how these words got assigned their genders.

[Punkmom]

Yep. Memorization is the only real way to do it.

[theoriginalkiwi]

how was I supposed to know it was "my boot" not just "boot" if the whole pharese was "Io ho serpente nello stivale."? There's no mio or anything

[russ582]

Exactly what i wrote but the app marked it wrong?

[Lakshmipri10]

It can be said "there's a snake in my boot", right?

[KevinFel]

You got a friend in me

[Soph393247]

The Nostalgia-

[inbalbrill]

What is the difference between "nello" and "nel"? Why here it says "nello" and not "nel"?

[jamrhein2]

The difference between and nello and nel is the same as la/il and lo. Use the one that ends in o for words that start with s+consonant and z+consonant. Il piatto would be nel piatto. Lo zucchero would be nello zucchero. Etc. It took me a little bit to realize that as well because it isn't very well explained, but if you know which "the" to use then you'll also know which "in the" and "on the" to use.

[Punkmom]

These are called "prepositional articles" because they combine a preposition and and article together. There is a nice chart showing the different forms at http://italian.about.com/library/fare/blfare153a.htm

[amirjdk]

Why is it translated as "my boot"? is it nello, or something else?

[Punkmom]

It seems that in Italian, you don't use the possessive article with the clothing that you are wearing. But, in English, we do.

[SussietheC]

Tu! Sei! Un! Giocattolo!

[RosaELansa]

I wonder I have got the answer wrong many times however i tried to answer correctly

[Protoss8]

Nice, Hope is not a Cobra