56 Comments
is the "al" necessary here? Could it not be "io mangio il gelato ciccolato"?
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.
it doesn't have any proper translation in English, but it can't be. It's like you saying a name followed by a name, instead of a name followed by an adjective
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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?
I remember I mentioned to an Italian friend about an ice cream called "gelato ice cream" in my country and he laughed. Now I get it, because for Italians, it means "ice cream ice cream" to them. But for non-Italian speakers, gelato is a different thing.
Why is it that sometimes the "the" is translated into English, and sometimes not? For this sentence it reads "I eat the ice cream," but on other examples it will say something like "Io bevo l'acqua" but the translation will just be "I drink water" not "I drink THE water." Very confused.
Now I get it! The word al is used to link the words gelato and cioccolato together. Together "gelato al cioccolato" means chocolate ice cream. I was confused before because "al" means "for" or "to" in other situations.
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.
American word gelato doesn't refer to the same thing as Italian gelato. While American gelato is a specific ice cream type, the Italian word refers to ice cream in general.
This I have noticed. I occasionally buy pistachio gelato from Italia. It's good. I also buy B&R pistachio almond... And whilest I ate it, my ex put a 'post it note' on my forehead that read: "Disturb at your own peril."
What do you mean saying that gelato is not the same as ice cream? I can't see the difference.
Edit: http://cookingequipment.about.com/od/icecreammachines/f/gelatovicecream.htm
Gelato is made without cream. Ice cream is... well, made with cream.
When speaking English I call gelato "gelato" and ice cream "ice cream". I never call gelato "ice cream". "Gelato" is a perfectly good English word (borrowed from Italian to describe something we don't otherwise have an accurate word for).
I realise some people may not make this distinction and just call it all "ice cream", but I'm a native English speaker and I don't want to get marked wrong for something I know is perfectly good English.
I'm no chef, but gelato is made with milk as well :/ Without milk it would be granita (semi-frozen sweet drink) or grattachecca (shaved ice).
According to Wikipedia, "Gelato is made with milk, cream, various sugars, and flavoring such as fresh fruit and nut purees. Gelato is defined in English as a soft ice cream containing little or no air."
That being said, I think gelato, the several spellings of "panino" (included "pannini"), salame (salami), cappuccino and so on, are so common in current English that they should be accepted. After all, in the French section they accept sandwich as a French word...
Typically, ice cream (American) has a higher fat content than gelato (and a higher air content); many Italian gelato use milk, but ice cream usually uses milk with cream added (minimum 10% butter fat, whereas milk has 4% fat). Since fat helps create a soft and creamy texture (and more air), gelato is made with more sugar to improve the texture over "ice milk" which is neither gelato or ice cream or really all that pleasant. Really the best American analog to gelato is sherbet, which is lower-fat higher sugar than ice cream. But that may just be the FDA making us use proper descriptors so you know what you are getting. I mean, how do Italians know what they are getting? Do they have other words besides gelato? And sorbetto.
Thanks!
I love Duolingo, for contributions like this. We don't just learn languages but culture!
In Spanish, as we share the same latin root with Italian, we use "Helado" for gelato and icre cream.
It is not because 'gelato' is an English word borrowed from Italian that it means the same as the Italian word gelato. What you call 'gelato', we call 'ijs' (ice) in Dutch, and 'roomijs' (creamice) is of course ice cream. but our 'ice' (your gelato) is not the same as Italian gelato.
I worked at an italian ice cream store and gelato is 6% butterfat in the cream
Lol bro the English language is a bit "extra" when compared to other languages. I think its the adjectives. In English there's almost a word for almost everything when most of time its not necessary. So when English speakers learn new languages, the question "whats the word for "this/that/the" will always come up because they're so used to being very specific when describing something. Im Hispanic but i learned English first then Spanish because i grew up in the states but i can somewhat tell English is a broken down language and thats why its hard for foreigners to learn it because its just extra lol.
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I concur. Gelato has been in the English lexicon for so long that it's part of the language. Just as capuccino is.
"I eat the ice cream with chocolate" Is it also wrong in English ?just wonder^^
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.
It implies that you've added chocolate to the ice cream, or that you're eating them together
I got marked wrong for typing i eat a chocolate ice cream, isn't that a correct response as well?
"il" = "the". Your version would be "Io mangio un gelato al cioccolato. Ciao e buona fortuna.
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?
How can pronounce the "il" after "mangio"? It sounds like that the two words have blended into one.
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.
Gelato is used as a word for ice cream in English so, "I eat the chocolate gelato" should also be acceptable as a translation.
In English you would normally say "I eat chocolate ice cream" and not "I eat THE chocolate ice cream" unless it's a specific one, but that's normally less likely. Otherwise it sounds really stupid
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
In Spanish we can say icecream of cream, icecream of water, icecream* of milk, icecream of yogurt.... and also icecream of any flavor.... "Nieve de chocolate" in this case.
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Which word? See Duo's website for the Tips and Notes of this chapter. It may help.
