"We have dinner."
Translation:Ceniamo.
71 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Ceniamo=iamo which is 'we have' or 'lets have' then you put whatever the word is. For example, 'mangiamo is 'mangia' (eat) and 'iamo' (lets have/we have/will we). Another example is 'andiamo' is 'Lets go' or 'Come on'. Hope this helps :)
I know! They threw that in! Avere = to have Some of it we've already had. I have - io ho He has - lui ha You have (informal) - tu hai you have (plural) - Voi avete they have - Loro hanno We have - Noi abbiamo And I hope I got that right! :)
Yep! Perfect conjugation of avere. I would have just thrown in there lui/LEI ha = he/SHE has. That's pretty important to point out. Nice though! :)
i wrote "noi abbiamo cena" as the English sentence is "We have dinner." NOT "We have the dinner.";why it is a mistake?
You're thinking too much in terms of verbatim translation. Noi abbiamo cena literally means "we have dinner". As if to say you and a buddy went to pick up dinner or food for your family. Then you call your mom and say "noi abbiamo cena". It states you and your friend physically have the dinner in your possession. A lot of people don't realize cena is actually the lui/lei form of the verb cenare (to have dinner). If you follow the conjuation rules for regular "are" verbs, (noi) ceniamo actually means "we have dinner". Which is the action of "having dinner (to consume/eat the food, not to possess the food)". Hope this helps :)
694
But that's how I read the sentence. "We have dinner" is, at best, strained English for implying consumption of the evening meal. "We are having dinner" or "We eat dinner" would have been a more appropriate prompt for the answer they were looking for.
you are the first person that has explained this clearly! Get a job writing for this app - it's taken me about 30 years to have that explained to me college professors and all!
- 792
Technically you said "We have the dinner." It is better to use the verb "to eat dinner", in this case "ceniamo" :D
It's amazing how Italian can compress without loss of meaning the three English words "we have dinner" into only 1 word: ceniamo :)
For sure! But that's also what makes it difficult, verb conjugation, which we have very little of in English. Mangiamo = Let's eat, Mangio = I eat, Andiamo = Let's go, Vado = I go, and so on. French is similar with a zillion verb conjugations, but you can't drop the subject as much as in Italian. Convenient, but a killer to learn, and I continually get them wrong! My Italian friends say I talk like a child, because I use all the words instead of the conjugated short cuts, and I'm very articulate because I'm trying, and usually place the words in the wrong order, in English order. LOL
it is too much too soon, but I am getting there hopefully. I am going to Italy in September so I want to get it right.
Hope that you had a great trip!! I too feel that it is too much, too soon. The French lessons are so much better paced in my opinion
I don't understand why sometimes "la" is used and sometimes not. In the English, it doesn't say "the". Is there a rule here?
Tasha, This is because "cenare' is already the verb for "to have dinner". That would be like saying in English, "we eat dinner the dinner." It's hard to translate it verbatim but that would be the idea. Noi ceniamo already implies it's dinner we are eating, since the verb itself is based around dinner.
- 1146
What about "Noi pranziamo." I have a dictionary that shows pranzare can mean to have lunch or to have DINNER.
Pranziamo is already conjugated with "we" in the "...iamo". So you don't need "noi". Pranziamo means "Let's have lunch" or "We are eating lunch".
This is why i dont like learning other languages! I never remember these words and when i do they're never "grammatically correct"
Yes, it's hard. Duolingo is a fabulous tool for fluency, review and feels like a game, but is hugely beneficial. However, unless you have used a series like I recommend Living Language, you don't learn verb conjugations. Forget Rosetta Stone, btw, it's terrible and expensive. Living Language is only about $50 and comes with a book and 4 CDs. I have it for French and Italian. It's very academic, but lays the ground work to be able to really enjoy the benefits of Duolingo.
- 357
the verb 'have dinner' / verbo 'cenare': io ceno, tu ceni, lui/lei cena - noi ceniamo, voi cenate, loro cenano
- 357
the verb 'have dinner' / verbo 'cenare': io ceno, tu ceni, lui/lei cena - noi ceniamo, voi cenate, loro cenano
- 357
the verb 'have dinner' / verbo 'cenare': io ceno, tu ceni, lui/lei cena - noi ceniamo, voi cenate, loro cenano
"Facciamo" comes from the verb fare, which means to do/to make. Since facciamo uses the noi or "we" tense of fare, facciamo means "we do" or "we make". It's a completely separate verb from cenare.
Well, abbiamo is the noi (we) form of the verb "avere", which means to have/to own. So the translation would be to physically having the lunch/dinner (depending on the context) in your possession. It would be no different than saying "noi abbiamo le mele" (we have the apples). Hope this helped!
I recommend getting a reference book. Duolingo is a fabulous tool for fluency, review and feels like a game, but is hugely beneficial. However, unless you have gone through something like Living Language, you don't learn verb conjugations. Forget Rosetta Stone, btw, it's terrible and expensive. Living Language is only about $50 and comes with a text book and 4 CDs. I have it for French and Italian. It's very academic, but lays the ground work to be able to really enjoy the benefits of Duolingo.
- 432
I undestand ceniamo and that is the answer I gave. why did it tell me "fecciamo" was the answer it wanted? I dont even know that word.
"We are having dinner." might be a better English to translate (esp if you don't want it translated as "Noi abbiamo cena."
"abbiamo cena" wasn't accepted? the definite article shouldnt be necessary
If you translate from English word for word into Italian... Noi is "we". "Ho" is the verb conjugation for first person "have". So to say "we have" you would say "noi abbiamo" or just "abbiamo" which also means "we have". But "Have" in Italian means you have it in your possession. In English we use "have" to mean eat. So if you say "noi abbiamo la cena". You're saying "we have the dinner" like you just picked it up and you're carrying it in your car or in your hands. But you're not saying that you're eating dinner together. "Ceniamo" is a combination of a noun conjugated as a verb. And that one word alone can be used to say, "we are eating dinner" or "let's eat dinner".
the first time it says "facciamo" (ceniamo was incorrect) the second time I put "facciamo" and it said the correct word was "ceniamo"'
Noi ceniamo can be translate in English as "we have dinner" or "we ate dinner"
This is such a vague, question as it could imply that they are having dinner, or they possess dinner
It doesn't mean "We're having dinner." You might say that in a call or text to someone after you picked up some dinner to bring home. As it literally says "We have the dinner."
I thought so too. If you look at older posts, cenare is a verb "to have dinner". So you follow rules for verbs that end in -are. You drop -are, can. noi (We) +iamo = Caniamo.
I wish they would give us the whole words to like (cenare) so we know what to look up and study too. Like a little more tips of the vocab words they'll be introducing. People can choose to go in blind or read up first. I often find myself looking for other sources to truly understand the grammer and rules.