"Il pinguino mangia pesce."

Translation: The penguin eats fish.

[AdriaaNL]

Ok, it made me laugh quite loudly that pinguino may also mean chocolate ice cream. Has this ever confused Italian people? :)

[Biomax]

"Pinguino" o "Mottarello" is vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate and served with a stick to hold it.

Here are a few images of this ice cream: http://goo.gl/Fdb2CQ

[David433562]

Yum yum

[BritniMont]

Well I guess it's like Americans (or whoever else does this) calling an ice cream flavor "moose tracks".

[Aaron.o]

il gelato al cioccolato is chocolate ice cream

[princessanna777]

My italian boyfriend said it doesn't mean chocolate ice cream...

[Mimichella_xx]

Peek shows it as choc-ice, quite amusing

[Rhondaboundy]

I don't understand why fish has to be in the singular...'pesce' not 'pesci'. Why not a choice

[AmKo2E]

I agree. In english "...eats fish" generally means plural fish, otherwise it'd be "...eats the fish..."

[ItalianoChad]

So i asked my Italian husband exactly this and he said its just an exception in the language. You can say il gatto mangia pesce, but you can't say il gatto mangia uccello. Pesce can be singular and still refer to the plural idea of fish. It's just an exception.

[joezeth.obias]

What I don't get is why answering "the penguin eats the fish" is wrong.

[joezeth.obias]

Well, the image now convinces me that this specific "gelato" looks like a pinguino" being it is black and white and cold. :D

[Sean.t.Walter]

In the English sentence "The Penguin eats fish", fish is plural, for it to be singular there would need to be an "a" before 'fish'. Is that different in Italian? Can pesce (fish singular) be used without an 'un' before it?

[Rae.F]

It's actually a mass noun, not plural per se.

[__PinkDragon__]

We all know penguins eat fish. Finally something that makes sense!

[den749]

In portuguese pinguino is pinguim

[hgflores]

Ho pensato in "Gotham"...

[DeborahJoh619548]

Why couldn't it be Le pinguino?

[Rae.F]

Mismatch error. Pinguino is singular masculine and le is plural feminine.

https://i.imgur.com/aJ7Qlgb.jpg

[DeborahJoh619548]

That's a great chart to help know all the articles! Thank you!!
Rae.F. Are you working on all those different languages? Wow!

[Rae.F]

You're welcome.

And not at the same time. I bounce around, although right now I'm focusing on Spanish. Some of them I tried and then haven't gone back to (you can tell because the numbers are so low).

[DeborahJoh619548]

That is amazing how you can keep all those languages in your head and not get them mixed up! I can barely remember what I need to for Italian. The languages derived from Latin are similar in many ways too making them easy to confuse, for me at least!! Kudos to you!!

[Rae.F]

Oh, if I go from one Romance language to another, I will get a bit of interference. It takes a little while focusing on one language to shake the confusion.

[PhilipeMatheos]

I didn't have the word "fish" to end my phrase and Duo put me wrong.

[Cam519301]

At least the mouse has a night off from being eaten.

[vivianperalta1]

i didnt know penguins eat ice cream

[wildflamer17]

Did it get bored of the fruit finally?

[Rhyfelgar]

Nobody commenting, 'Poor fish.' Why not?

[Rae.F]

Because we're not childishly cluttering up the forum with off-topic chatter.

[AT12Sa]

"The penguin's eating fish" is a perfectly good translation, and is what a native English speaker would probably say.