28 Comments
Vi is the plural you. "I see ya'll under the bridge" or "I see you lot..." or "I see all you (people)..."
"I see you lot..." Wow, that's awesome! Hadn't heard that one enough to think of it. I can hear the British accent ringing in my ears (one kind or another Br. accent, that is....) Right, that's cool, that is...; ) That'll be all then. Cheers, mate!
The "you" is plural. In English we wouldn't know if this was being spoken to one person or a group of people. So translating BACK from English could be Vi or Ti.
Waaay back at the beginning when I learned the difference between "tu" and "voi", I have done my best to always type "you all" whenever I see "voi" (and now "vi") just to make sure that my mind registers the difference. [I'm from Texas, so I guess I could use "y'all", but I grew up being taught "ya'll". So, to be safe, I skip it and just use "you all" - gotta keep them hearts ;) ]
In normal Italian usage this could also mean "I will meet you under the bridge" which I suspect was the meaning of this sentence in its original context.
Nice try :) but this is not the case.
That meaning is rendered by "Ci vediamo sotto il ponte", where "ci" literally means "us" and implies a "reciprocal reflexive", as we could call it. The underlying extended meaning of "Ci vediamo" is "I see you and you see me" there.
"Ti vedo" / "Vi vedo" means only, literally, "I see you"
146
Speaking Spanish, my mind mixed up the words and made up the sentence "Vive da sotto il ponte", thinking this means "He lives under the bridge", a funny and legit phrase. It got accepted, but to my surprise the recording says something very different.
At normal spped, the narrator sounds like she says "sopra" instead of "sotto". (I played it several times.) At slow speed, she does clearly say "sotto".
