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- Topic: Italian >
- "Io sono di gennaio."
226 Comments
I liked the hearts, but I have to admit I think the new system is both less stressful and more enjoyable. It takes the onus from not making mistakes to correcting that made mistake when they (often immediately) throw the same question back at you.
As a largely tablet user I don't usually get to the read the lesson explanation on the lesson summary page or the pop-up explanations during them and partly therefore had a lot of trouble with one of the earlier lessons. I was sorely tempted to quit after failing it for the fifth time and the new system does eliminate that frustration.
Molte grazie Duolinguo!
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It's the old Duolingo system. You had three hearts and you lost a heart when you had a wrong answer. If you lost all your hearts you had to start the lesson over again.
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The have brought back the hearts at the end of 2020. Now you get 5 hearts instead of 3. You also have the option of turning on unlimited hearts if losing hearts is too stressful for you.
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I don't take them too seriously, but some people do. I guess retaking the whole lesson is to much of a hassle.
I entirely agree with you. A lot of people seem to be intent on just reaching the next node and forget that their success on doing so should be a reflection of how well they master the level. About the hearts : if you are a DL mobile app user and kept yourself from updating it, you still have the old system and can continue cashing on those lingot bonuses.
Yes, I still have the old app and can use it to get heart bonuses. Thanks for pointing that out. I prefer to use my laptop though, since it has a keyboard. The app is on my phone so it's tedious to use. When I get a tablet maybe I can transfer the app to that. Actually, I have become accustomed to the new system and do not miss the heart bonuses all that much anymore.
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Yep, having fun getting to a (vaguely) beginner level in the language, but the heart's thing is entirely new to me. What have I been doing with my life? So niente (if that is even approximately correct).
In some languages it's very common to say e.g. "I am from January" meaning "I was born in January". It is so in Polish. So for me "I am from January" sounds absolutely ok and is understandable, even without context. :)
Hehehaha I got caught by this one. I couldn't think what it was so I put "I am in January." and thought it might be a round-about way to say "It's January.", but duolingo told me the correct answer was "I am of January." which we wouldn't say either. I laughed when I saw this page with "I was born in January."
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No it hasn't. It came up this morning. "From January" is not used in English. The hover option gives "in" which I and others have used and then been marked incorrect. This needs to be updated by DL.
When did sono become past tense. Certainly not taught in the lesson. You have to guess whats correct. Thats really not learning by guess work.
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I got it right, but put 'I am from January' and didn't understand what it meant. It has changed at the top now to 'born', and as it happens, they are right, as I was born in January!! Aren't they clever!!! I also don't care about the hearts and lingots, and never 'use' them. I just want to get a rough idea of the language, if not fluent, then enough to get me by if ever I visit Italy, which I hope I will one day.
I did a literal translation and then came to the comments to figure out what the heck it actually meant. not because I didn't want to take extra questions to get to the end of the lesson - but because I honestly had no flipping idea what the heck "I am from January" was possibly supposed to actually mean. now I feel stupid.
I am not sure where YOUR priority is, whether game playing or language acquisition, but 'a heart' refers to Duolingo's previous system for completing a level. You started with 3 hearts, and lost one for each mistake. If you lost them all, you had to start over. As for this thread giving no help - what help are you requesting?
no clutter ... seriously ... if asked " What month are you born in?" Would your answer be any different than " I am born in January" Am is equally correct here. You could say I was born in January (referring to the birth) or I am born in January (referring to the month) ... Ok hair splitting, I admit, but "I am born in January" should be correct. Unless Italians say that with a different expression.
This is an idiom, so you can't translate it literally. As many have pointed out above, "I am of/from January" is not used in English. "Sono di gennaio" means that your birthday is in January, so you would say, "I was born," referring to an action in the past (being born). The Italian uses the present, like how you could say in English, "I am a Capricorn" (present), which would mean you were born (past) in December or January.
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wasn't it 'sono nato a gennaio'? yes, if you are going from English to Italian.
GraceD0145: if you want to say 'I am born anew' that's ok, or 'I am born of light and darkness' that's ok. but if you mean January is the month of your birth, then you have to use past tense: 'I was born in january'. in Italian, one way is the idiom 'io sono di gennaio.'
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Can someone explain to me why the verb nato is not used here? I figured that this was one of those many idiomatic expressions that many languages have, but I am just curious. I too am doing the Italian on my phone, and have to place the example in google to get to this page. Thankfully I am also taking a class to help me understand the grammer and structure a bit better.
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since this is an idiom the rules don't apply. if you translate it literally, it would be 'I am'.
I consulted my Italian teacher from Rome about this phrase. She explained that this sentence this is very colloquial, not literary or formal. The use of PProssimo Nascere is correct but not used as much as an "every day phrase". It seems the use of "sono di" followed by a month, changes the sentence to "i was born.." I believe this also applies to "Sei di....."
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the answer is idiomatic. "Ero nascire di gennaio" more closely says i was born in January. Converting "sono" from "i am" to the past "I was" is idiomatic. That is, Italians choose to use it in that way.
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I wrote "i am born in January" and it corrected it to "i WAS born in January". Is sono also the past tense of 'am'? This is the first time so far I've seen a past tense
Yes and no. Google translation is a work in progress, using some of the most advanced software technology currently in development (deep neural nets). The key phrase is "in development." Some languages Google does better than others (the Latin, for instance is very poor, still useful though as long as you keep that mind!).
The trick is to realize that Google translate is only a rough tool. Some of the owner's manuals and emails I received that are worded so very strangely have in fact been translated by some such software. So rather than hire a bi-lingual expert, these companies use software for translation and end up looking very silly and amateurish. But that's the state of the art.
Why did Google translate that particular set of phrases differently? Dunno... but Google translate does have an equivalent to Duo's "report" feature, and that can help Google get better, like it's supposed to do with Wise Old Owl.
Short version: Watching Google translate in action ought reassure any one who is afraid of AI that AI is still a loooooong way off.
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The italian sentence does not match the english translation should translate to I am of January
Yeah... they don't do that. Duo matches intent of the speaker to intent of the speaker and the nearest phrase that would be used in that situation. I wish they would offer additionally a literal translation as well as a colloquial, but they don't.
And you are correct; that is what is says, but that's not what it means. Literal translation can also change the meaning. Yet it's also a clue to how an entire people think, yet... etc.
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'sono di gennaio' is the form used in Milan, and perhaps other places too. It is a bit pretentious-sounding to some people though, so it is not used everywhere. The phrase you are looking for is probably 'Sono nato a Gennaio' I think, with 'nato'(masc.) and 'nata'(femme) as the 'word for being born'. But this form is used in Italy too, in places like Tuscany. I hope this helps! :D
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'Sono di Gennaio' is a perfectly good way to say you were born in January, but for those interested, it is useful to note that this is - unsurprisingly - not used everywhere in Italy. For example, my mum is from Tuscany where they say 'Sono nata a Gennaio' (Nata because I am female, if I were to refer to myself as a male then 'nato' I suppose?) or 'il mio compleanno è/èd di/a Gennaio', and other such variants. 'I am from January/ io sono di gennaio' sounds a bit pretentious in Tuscany apparently, but in Milan they use the 'io sono di gennaio' form, where it would not be considered pretentious at all! All of this to say that there are other forms used in various cities, and to be aware of them so that you don't get thrown off your flow in conversation!
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I wrote it literally. Sometimes they expect literal...as they say to help you understand their syntac
So I wrote it literal and lost a heart..Im on mobile
I agree with you in spirit. However, by "retaining hearts" the students are striving for better performance. Admittedly, the better performance becomes secondary, rather than primary, and that's shame. But that's also reality among people whose natural instinct and drive for learning has been severely blunted, if not destroyed, by public education. Alas and alack... There have been days when simply not losing the streak has dragged me over to the computer for my daily lessons. It's a tool; like all tools, it's what you do with it that counts.