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- Topic: Italian >
- "Abbigliamento donna"
53 Comments
shoudl be donne --they keep changing their trnaslation theory: literal to open make up your mind they had this as a HUGE problem in Frnech
I agree it should have been donne. Woman's clothing is just as correct as women's clothing. Donna is woman, donne is women. Use the appropriate word!
Here's the problem. In Italian, the signs for the department selling clothing that women wear use the singular while the English uses the plural. This is a phrase rather than two separate words and we think differently about the idea behind it. Try googling "woman's department" in English and it will say, did you mean "women's department?'"
And it is not just the signs in a store. Notice that I didn't write the clothing that a woman wears, although that is grammatically correct--it is just not the normal way of saying it. You can't always translate word for word. DL can be a challenge because sometimes it insists on the literal, but I think they are right here not to accept woman's department.
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Thank you for the excellent explanation. It bothers me when people who are not very familiar with a language insist that their translation is correct, even when they are novices! I know that if I read enough comments (such as yours) I'll get to the proper answer.
Well in English the difference is abbigliamento is clothing, while vestiti is dress. English still uses dress to mean both the specific article of clothes as well as the general form for clothes, for instance "that is a beautiful dress" referring to an actual gown, versus "please wear formal dress" that which is required to a ball, wedding, funeral, etc.
I do not know which is more common in Italian usage.
I don't really now but isn't vestiti clothes and abbigliamento clothing? Why can't they similar!
"L'abbigliamento" is "clothes" in general while "Vestito" is more like "dress" or sometime nightgown.
women's clothing and woman's clothing are both acceptable in English, they should both be acceptable as translations here, no?
I haven't heard 'woman's clothing' used as a term - the singular form would denote that the clothing belongs to one woman.
Where is this the case? Woman is singular, that is one female person and women is plural, that is more than one woman. It comes from old English which made plurals very differently from English that has been changed by all the invasions from Europe. So, woman's means something belonging to a single woman and women's means something belonging to several women.
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By common usage it is the case. I was born and raised in San Francisco and my mom cared about grammar. I am certain we used "woman's clothing" at some point to reference clothing for a woman, although I agree it does not seem common.
All of you writing "ladies wear", "feminine clothing"; you can't just write anything with the same meaning and complain about it marked wrong. You have to translate THIS sentence. No place for synonyms
Well, they can ... but there's no guarantee their response will actually be accepted. ;-)
I understand Duo is now accepting Ladies wear.
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Ladies are always women, but not all women are ladies. So the word Woman/Women is more safe, it contains both categories, no one should feel herself excluded... :)
I am very confused. Why wouldn't women's clothing be "abbligliamento di donne"? How do possessives work in Italian? Do you have to say "the clothing of women", like in spanish, or no of?
http://duolingo.com/#/comment/235714
"Abbigliamento donna" is how you would read it in a big shop on several floors.
In a sentence you would say "Abbigliamento da donna"
Indeed. I did a google search for this phrase, and among the search results were Gucci and Collezione. That IS how they call it in Italian.
I Googled "abbigliamento donna", making sure to only pay attention to results from Italian websites (with the .it top-level domain) and the results were fairly clear.
Many said abbigliamento donna, some said abbigliamento da donna, and only a few said abbigliamento donne.
To those insisting that it "should" be one way or the other based on how we say it in English: Never try to apply the rules of one langauage to another. It just doesn't work that way.
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"abbigliamento donna" può benissimo significare: "abbigliamento da donna". Il fatto, poi, di tradurre: "L'abbigliamento delle donne" è qualcosa di veramente fantasioso. Si evince, veramente, della creatività da parte dell'autore...Avvisateci prima: "guardate che la traduzione giusta sarebbe "Woman clothing", però non fateci caso perchè questa vuole essere solo una domanda a trabocchetto, così la traduzione vi rimane in mente: è pedagogia...per la formazione del fanciullo...
ladieswear is very common in English, therefore should not be marked wrong.
I write men's wear and got it marked wrong, so I went with women's clothing here, to be safe. I believe that the expressions menswear and womenswear is far more common in English than men's clothing and women's clothing!
Vestiti is clothes I think and abbigliamento is clothing anyway they should be similar.
I checked Google translate and they had the same translation as above. This is a language quirk that probably should not have been introduced at this time
I agree. Or, if they introduce it, they should give a notification that this is idiomatic. Otherwise we have know way of knowing that it means "women's section" out of context.
I was just thinking about: "how can be this answer when it doesn't teach me this?" then I right something else and it was the answer.
I got it correct. But, please explain why it is not: Abbigliamento donne - since it is WOMENS - plural clothing
OK, I get the phrase in Italian, but... how are we suppose to know this? This is a crappy way to find things out. When they give us a NEW expression, then let us know first time around at least.
I am so confused. When you click to see the translation, it says Ladiesware, but when I put that as an answer, it marked it as wrong.
If you type "ladieswear" (not "ladiesware") and it marks you wrong, please flag it and report "My answer should be accepted."
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Strictly speaking, yes. However, the use of "dress" as a synonym for clothing is pretty rare these days, at least in UK English.
Arguably yes, but it's not quite widespread enough to warrant inclusion in the prompt's answer database, and it's unlikely to be found on a sign in a department store.
Because phrases are more than the sum of their parts, and different languages put phrases together differently. If you go to a department store in Italy, the signs on the wall and hanging from the ceiling will read "Abbigliamento Donna".
Quoting from higher up on this page:
The issue is not "donna is singular; donne is plural". The issue is how they say it in Italian. And in Italian, they use the singular.
https://www.amazon.it/Abbigliamento-Donna/b?ie=UTF8&node=2892859031
https://www.motivi.com/it/abbigliamento-donna
https://www2.hm.com/it_it/donna/nuovi-arrivi/abbigliamento.html#modal-1
Confusing. I thought it should be Women, but it was definitely singular, plus, why not Della? Clothing of women?
Because that's the idiom in Italian.
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/90474?comment_id=31271900
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/90474?comment_id=27943382
I figured that out, but sometimes lt just feels like they trick you. Luckily they always ask it again, so you can get it right!
