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- Topic: Italian >
- "Tu leggi il libro."
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To all those struggling with hearing the articles: If a word has a vowel at the end and is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the vowel at the end of the first word is usually dropped, especially in fast speech. So what you are hearing here is 'Tu legg-il libro'. If it was 'un', you would hear 'Tu legg-un libro', which sounds nothing alike. This also occurs in 'l'acqua' for example, but because there is a mandatory contraction here, you can't see that it is actually 'lo acqua' with the 'o' dropped.
Thanks hutch66. Good explanation. WedoitinEnglishtoo, thatis,runwordstogether.
I agree also. Occurs regularly, too. I have cranked up my sound level and clearly hear "un" when the text says "il" The narrator nearly swallows the articles. To tell the difference you need to listen very closely and interpret from the different sound the narrator makes neither of which will sound like the article in the translation. "il" sounds like a very short "i", without the "l", "un" sounds like a very short "uh". I have to play it slowly and put my ear right next to the speaker to pick this up. I try to rely on the narrators repetition of these sounds as stand-ins for the actual articles. I do not believe fast speech is the cause. It may be that native speakers actually shorten their articles this way frequently as a part of casual conversation, we do similar things, but the lessons demand accurracy.
So there is "voi leggete" which means "you read"...and then there is "tu leggi il libro" which means "you read the book." How come it is not "tu leggi" for "you read" and "voi leggete il libro" for "you read the book?? I guess I don't get why you use "voi leggete" and then "tu leggi" when in both cases your using you so they both say "you read"...
voi is actually used in case of plural.. voi means 'you all' whereas tu means singular 'you'!
It is very similar to the vosotros/vosotras in Spanish conjugation, right? I just have a difficult time remembering the various conjugations :)
I'm having trouble with what exactly this phrase means...I think the tense of the english translation is confusing me.
Can someone help me understand the difference between leggi, and leggete? I thought both were (you) read
- Tu leggi: you alone read (something), i.e. it's singular
- Voi leggete: you and at least somebody else (or some people else) read (something), i.e. it's plural
Can someone help me understand the difference between leggi, and leggete? I thought both were (you) read
italian verbs change depending on whos doing the verb if the subject is "tu" the verb ends in -i
What version of leggi leggono ... Should be used . i always make this mistake..
Im have a bit of trouble with the tenses of "read" some of the words are read, reads, and then past tense read. I can't differentiate between them because it keeps showing all of them as "read" when it asks me what the word means. But it put into a scentence such as "we read a book" the word suddenly changes into a different tense.
Because for leggo, the subject is Io (with a capital I)** The conjugation is: (Io) leggo (Tu) leggi (Lui/lei) legge (Noi) leggiamo (Voi) leggete (Loro) leggono
There is an actual word that describes this blending-of-words phenomenon.
Someone else on here explained it a while ago on another lesson of mine...
