23 Comments
Well, excuse me for trying to be grammatically correct and say "when she wants to". Go ahead and take one of my hearts.
I wrote " She eats bread when she likes" which also seems more correct.
I think 'likes' would be more common than 'wants' in England, but it may be regional. More common still would be '... whenever she likes', but does that translate differently to Italian?
That's what Google translate says, but the (IMO more trustworthy) Collins dictionary says «ogni volta che» is specific to meaning 'every time that', whereas the simple «quando» (or «in qualsiasi momento») is used for meaning 'at whatever time' - which is the English sense of the phrase above.
If so, 'whenever' should be an allowed alternative. Could a native Italian speaker please comment?
You make a good point. Here is wordreference's entry too (with the Collins tab available as well): http://www.wordreference.com/enit/whenever. However, I would just like to point out that Google Translate seems, to me, to be accurate when you type in one word and get the entry pop up listed at the bottom of the target language window, which happened when I typed in "whenever." Also, in Portuguese, my first language and a fellow Romance language, we can also say «cada vez que» («ogni volta che») to mean "whenever," so I would not say it is incorrect. I would agree, though, that Collins is generally more trustworthy. :)
My native English viewpoint tells me that 'ogni volta che' is not the same as 'quando' or 'qualsiasi momento'. We use "whenever" to refer to a set of occasions or to choices of time. The particular phrase.above is about a choice of time. Collins knows the difference, and says the former is 'volta' and the latter is 'quando'.
Google Translate knows this difference when given enough context. For example, a double choice such as "eat whatever and whenever you like" becomes 'mangiare quello e quando vuoi'. You'd struggle to structure an acceptable alternative using 'ogni'. And it would also be less beautiful :-)
Yes it's a second time in 2 days I've come across a sentence with a nice rhythm ... loooong shorta shorta shorta shorta
I think that "She eats bread when she will" should also be accepted, "will" being usable (admittedly in rather archaic fashion) as a synonym of want, as in the phrase "As you will."
