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- "L'animale mangia il suo cibo…
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Wouldn't "The animal eats his/her food" also be okay? I interpreted il suo cibo as not being the animal's, as being someone else's...
I guess since il suo can mean his, her, or its, the default is to assume that an animal of unknown gender is eating "its" food.
That's in the case when I know the person by name or something. But when I want to refer to them as "he" or "she" the sentence stays as it is, doesn't it?
I still don't understand how am I supposed to know that the animal is eating its own food. It's not specified in the sentence, it could've been eating anyone's food.
You can say the same thing about the English construction, can't you?
In English the sentence would go like this: "The animal is eating his/her/its food." So I still don't understand why "his" and "her" is not marked correct. What is the reason? Why only "its" is correct if we don't know who the food belongs to?
You don't have to know any names, just fill in a pronoun. It would simply be "L'animale mangia il cibo di lui/lei/loro."
I still don't understand how am I supposed to know that the animal is eating its own food. It's not specified in the sentence, it could've been eating anyone's food.
I'm just trying to understand the reason why it isn't correct. Because I can't see any reason right now.
I don't know. Ask the Duo team? They're the ones who programmed in the answers.
But the food doesn't have to be of the animal... Imagine a group of zoologists in a rainforest. A gorilla starts to eat one of the female scientist's meal. And somebody says: "The animal is eating her food."
I'm just trying to understand the reason why it isn't correct. Because I can't see any reason right now.
Its true. Or even if you have some emotional relation with the animal, like a pet, is common to use he/ she.
Why do you give the answer for "suo and sua" as her, his," how do I know when to use "suo" or "sua" please, be specific.
Sometimes when you get new words you really do need to read the "explain this" that pops up when your hover over it. When using a possessive in Italian, the gender and plurality of the possessive should be in line with the object being "owned", not the person doing the "owning" So "his monkey" is "la sua scimmia" because the Italian word for the monkey "la scimmia" is feminine. It does not matter if we are talking about a male who owns a monkey, because "la sua" can mean his, her, hers, or its. As well, "il suo" can mean his, her, hers, or its, but it should only be used when the thing (noun) being owned is plural and masculine. Ex: her dog- "il suo cane"
Sorry - just asking about the "explain this" that pops up - is that when using a computer? I don't see this on my App.
Yes, they were referring to the website. For whatever reason, the app has a lot fewer features.
I try to understand this, why is not good on that way.Then how we can say in italian "The animal eats her food"
If the gender of the animal is unknown, in English we would use "its food". How do you know the gender of this animal, when we do not even know what kind of animal it is? If the animal is eating the little girl's food, then it is said the same way, but shouldn't there be more information then. Normally, we work with the information we have. So far, just an animal...
"it's= it is" not "its" which is possessive and it's one animal (l'animale), not plural (gli animali) and why would you use "own"?
I answered correctly why?? is it marked wrong. it shows that ¨The animal eats her food.¨ should have been checked off too. Otherwise it is wrong
I guess the animal is eating the personal food of a girl off of the table. I wonder if it is a cat?
How could this sentence not mean The Animal is eating His Own Food if there's Suo before Cibo? Isn't it its possessive?
"own" would be propria/proprio The gender of the animal is unknown so it would be "its"
Less information. "It" could be a box. Translate words which need to be practiced. This is not a paragraph with animal mentioned earlier in the paragraph. Once we know the gender of the animal we would say "her" or "his", until then we would say "its".
If the translation for "The animal eats its food" is "L'animale mangia il suo cibo," what is the translation for "The animal eats its 'own' food"?
The object of this sentence seems really unclear to me. Is "suo" referring to the animal eating its own food, or to the animal eating someone else's food? Is there any way to tell from just that one sentence? And if the gender is ambiguous, why isn't "their" an acceptable possessive pronoun? Are you only allowed to use that in the plural sense?
"Suo" is referring to the animal because that is the subject of the sentence. For this sentence, the gender of the animal is ambiguous so we would use "it" to signify that ambiguity. Once we are given the gender of the animal then we can start using his/her. If the animal was eating someone else's food it would be something like this "l'animale mangia il cibo di lei (the animal eats the food of hers; direct translation)". If the animal is eating it's own food it would be "l'animale mangia il proprio cibo (the animal eats its own food; remember we don't know the gender of the animal yet).
The reason why "their" is not accepted is because "their" refers to a group of of things and it would be expressed like this "gli animali mangiano il loro cibo (the animals eat their food).
Hope this is helpful
"the animal eats his own food" should also be an acceptable tranlation...
No. "The animal eats his own food" would be "L'animale mangia il proprio cibo."
Because l'animale mangia is "the animal eats".
Gli animali mangiano would be "the animals eat".
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This translation threw me a bit as previously, when things have been scoffing their own grub we'd have seen: L'Animale mangia il proprio cibo.
In Italian as in English, there's a difference between scarfing down his food (il suo cibo) and scarfing down his own food (il proprio cibo).
L'animale is singular. Plural would be gli animali. It's one of those irregular nouns that ends in -e in the singular and -i in the plural, and you just need to memorize whether it's masculine or feminine.
The animal eats its meal is just as good as its food. I shouldn't have been marked wrong.
