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- "Cosa bevi?"
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1044
Hi chupipe, "What do you drink" shows up as correct, I don't know if did before. But "what do you drink" is in a more general sense, like "if you were drinking, what would your choice be?" "What are you drinking" is now, "what is that drink you have?" This is also used for "what would you like to drink" when somone is about to buy a drink for another person. Romance languages don't tend to have this distinction.
The word hints were originally imported from some dictionary, long before there were multi-word hints, so sometimes they only make sense in certain (often very) specific contexts. For instance wordreference uses the "work" definition in "all in a day's work" ("cosa di tutti i giorni", everyday thing) and "matter" in "insignificant matter" ("cosa di poco conto", thing of little worth).
I'm not a native Italian speaker, but i would say that your question would be "Cosa vuoi bere?"
Just asked a native speaker: "Cosa vuoi da bere?" or "Cosa vorresti bere"
I asked him about the "da" he said that if you were asking what someone would like to drink (if you were getting them a drink) you put da bere. But you just want to know what this person wants to drink, you just say bere.
For example, 1.At a party, the host walks up to you with a bottle of coke, and says "Cosa vuoi da bere?" 2.At a restaurant, you are curious about what your friend is going to order, "Cosa vuoi bere?" I think. Well no native speaker is going to kill you for forgetting to put the word da, before bere.
555
I agree with you, chupipe. "What are you drinking?" can imply or gives a stronger impression that the second person is already drinking and that the first person is curious to what it is. "What do you drink?" only implies or gives the impression that no drink has taken place, yet.