"L'estate è finita."
Translation:The summer ended.
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Finire is normally conjugated with the auxilliary "avere" in passato prossimo. Here, finita is used as an adjective, and therefore present indicative of essere is used. Also, in expressions of time, weather and seasons, essere is used.
Is it really an adjective? In the English translations, it seems like a verb to me (summer did something).
So for those certain cases, essere is always used followed by the adjective/past participle? " the spring ended" = la primavera e finita?
I'm not quite sure this is accurate - it might have more to do with the verb being intransitive (no direct object, therefore, use essere) in this sentence versus transitive (with direct object, use avere). Can someone please comment? Thank you!
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Personally, I wrote "summer is ended" and it wasn't allowed. It seemed OK to me, familiar somehow: then I remembered that it's the title of a Christina Rosetti poem. If it's good enough for Christina then it's good enough for me, whatever DL thinks.
A lot of variations are marked incorrect. I said "Summer is done" which is similar to yours and acceptable English. Summer has ended, summer is over, summer is done, summer has finished, summer is finished. It seems that there is very little effort made to allow variations leaving us to play guessing games with Duolingo.
I said: Summer is ended, and DL said I was wrong! What is incorrect, please?
'has ended' sounds better to me... personally I would say 'is over'...
We are asked to translate L'estate e finita. In English, that would be summer is ended, over, finished. Why is Duo marking as "incorrect" the English translation?
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As far as I see "is ended" is a passive voice of "to end" , that means that smb "ends the summer" . There should be "ended" or "has ended"
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In English it can be a little tricky to distinguish between a subjective completion and a passive. A good tip is to see whether you can add a "by x" at the end. Consider:
"The house is painted" (painted is an adjectival completion here, describing the house).
and
"The house is painted by the owners." In this case the fact that you can add the "by" phrase at the end shows you that here "painted" is a past participle, part of the passive construction. However, the "by" phrase is often missing (which is why I said it's a bit tricky), but if you can put the by phrase on, then it's clearly a passive.
In this case "ended" describes the summer and is not part of a passive construction, because, quite clearly, no-one is doing the ending, and therefore you can't add a by-phrase.
Sometimes you just can't tell from a phrase whether it's an adjectival completion, or a passive. You have to look at the surrounding context and it will become clear (usually!).
There is simply no way of knowing whether "This temple has been painted" means: "this temple used to be decorated with paint, but now all the paint is gone, but we know it was once there" (adjectival) or "people have come and covered this temple in paint, which is probably not a good idea" (passive).
Hope this helps.
What is incorrect? Seems we'll never know! For the record, I translated it exactly the same way you did!
Is this sentence an example of finire when it is used intransitively?
'finire: Transitive verb (takes a direct object) or intransitive verb (does not take a direct object) (conjugated below with the auxiliary verb avere; when used intransitively, it is conjugated with the auxiliary verb essere)' (http://italian.about.com/library/verb/blverb_finire.htm)
If "The summer's finished" is accepted, "the summer is finished" should be as well.
What, if any, is the difference in meaning between this sentence and the title of this song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4KWQP6gaaY
"l'estate sta finendo" translates to "the summer is ending" whereas "l'estate ha finito" translates to "the summer has ended." I'm no English major, but I think it may be termed 'present progressive.'
this translation must also be correct: The summer is over. I assume most people would use "is over" and not "ended" in this case. Am I wrong?
The English translation of this sentence is: the summer is ended, has ended, has finished, is finished. that is how English speakers would translate it. We are asked to translate from Italian into English. Anyone who did this with the above options and marked incorrect, has been robbed!
Why are the following phrases marked wrong, 'Summer is ended' & 'The summer is over.'