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- "Io mangio il gelato al ciocc…
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No, it couldn't. You'll find more detailed explanations down the road (the topic came up quite often), but to sum up, cioccolato isn't an adjective, and in Romance languages you can't usually put two nouns together without some preposition; in Italian you have the choice of "di" (made of), "con" (with the addition of), and "a" (flavored). In this case "al cioccolato" means "chocolate-flavored"; this construct seems to have been borrowed from French (au chocolat) a couple of centuries ago.
1091
So if I were to eat strawberry ice cream, it would read, "Io mangio il gelato alla fragola," yes? I assume that all flavours would be written like that?
RAS syndrome.
Which stands for redundant acronym syndrome... syndrome?
195
I typed "I eat the chocolate gelato" and got marked wrong - it said the correct answer was "I eat chocolate ice cream"! Gelato is not the same as ice cream! I would never use the word "ice cream" in English to refer to gelato. I've reported this as an error.
"Gelato" means in Italian what "ice cream" means in English, no matter what your local English-speaking restaurant serves you. Many Italian restaurants and cafès do make rather specific kinds of ice cream, indeed, but as far as I know, this does not change the word's canonical, by-the-book Italian meaning.
107
Yes it is wrong in English, because "I eat ice cream WITH chocolate" means that you are eating ice cream AND something else (in this case, chocolate). If you said this, a native English speaker would think you meant ice cream with chocolate sauce, or chocolate candy, etc. The word "chocolate" can be used as an adjective (a word that describes a noun), but it is also a noun itself. So you have to be careful how you use it.
My answer to this question was: "I 'have' the chocolate ice cream." in stead of "I 'eat' the chocolate ice cream." Duo said this is wrong: why is it? In English you can say "to have ice cream", just as you can say "to have dinner", can't you? In other situations, a translation with 'to have' (such as: Pranzano - I 'have' lunch) is approved? Why not in this situation?
The "il" does get swallowed a bit, by this (computer?) speaker. It's clearer in the slow version of course. Minor articles, prepositions, etc. get swallowed (elided) in any language. There's a really strong one further on in this course - "In realtà lui è un buon tipo". The n is completely elided, it comes over as "Irrealta", fast or slow. I checked it extensively on other pronunciation sites, and it turns out that that combo, ie. "in + r---" is routinely elided to "ir---", at least in standard phrases like "in realita". There would be dozens of similar things in English, can't think of one right now. Hope that helps, ciao.
645
No, it couldn't. You'll find more detailed explanations down the road (the topic came up quite often), but to sum up, cioccolato isn't an adjective, and in Romance languages you can't usually put two nouns together without some preposition; in Italian you have the choice of "di" (made of), "con" (with the addition of), and "a" (flavored). In this case "al cioccolato" means "chocolate-flavored"; this construct seems to have been borrowed from French (au chocolat) a couple of centuries ago.
(Copied from the MOD, f.formica) https://www.duolingo.com/f.formica
Do Italians sometimes use the present simple rather than the present progressive?