"We do not have anything on the plate."
Translation:Non abbiamo nulla nel piatto.
27 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
"Qualcosa" does mean "anything", but only in positive sentences; not when you negate.
I don't like anything. I like anything.
Even though it's the same word, its meaning is much different. In Italian it'd be:
Non mi piace niente. Mi piace qualcosa.
In the sentence of this exercise, it's a negative sentence, so you need to indicate that "We have nothing on the plate", or what would be the same "We don't have anything on the plate.".
That's why you can't use "qualcosa", and you need "nulla".
I think (though stand to be corrected) that Italian, like French, often uses double negatives to make a negative construct. To Anglicize it, Italians would say "We do not have nothing". For example, "I have nothing" would be "Non ho niente". 'Qualcosa' is a positive, so does not complete the double negative pairing.
Because we're not talking about the adjective nulla/nullo, but the pronoun/adverb form. Which is only nulla. http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/italian-english/nulla
1130
I would like to really know the differences for all the answers. As an (American) English speaker a case can be made for all the answers.
To start, avere in 1st person plural should conjugate to abbiamo. The article for piatti is "i", not gli, and su + i must be written as sui. As for whether or not cosa is acceptable, I'd need a native speaker to weigh in, but as this is a negative construction nulla or niente sound more natural to my ear