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- "Io mangio la mela."
44 Comments
It's a good attitude to have in any case: embrace what's available and get what you can out of it. Like I've been using it a lot for refreshing French knowledge that was and had slipped away from school. So when I can remember enough to be like "hey, don't say it like that Duo", that's actually good practice. And losing a heart in Duo doesn't hurt in rl, even though sometimes it seems like it...
I enjoy that they don't mind the occasional recommendation of supplemental sites for pronunciation and such. People should understand it's a machine generated voice, so definitely not a 'natural' native sound in any case (yet). But as you say, it's sort of similar to the "recognizable conversation" bits, which were always some of the most useful yet frustratingly new and difficult bits of the language classes I had as well...hell, it was usually hard for us to understand each other at the start.
Guys. We are being taught how to read and speak basic sentences in Italian - the way they sound in real life. The sentences do not have to be profound. They are made for us to learn through speech, almost like how we learned our native language - WITHOUT having to memorize long lists of conjugation! And people in real life do not speak slowly like they are reading from a script.
Remember -we could all be reading from a textbook! That we actually paid money for! YUCK! Just take notes of what's new, and enjoy this AWESOME RESOURCE!
It is rather complicated: they always change with the change of the tense, but they also change depending on the infinitive form of the verb. For the simple present, verbs whose infinitive form ends with -ARE have the following verb endings (from the 1 person singular to the 3 person plural): -O,-I,-A,-IAMO,-ATE,-ANO. Infinitive form in -ERE: -O,-I,-E,-IAMO,-ETE,-ONO. Infinitive form in -IRE: -O,-I,-E,-IAMO,-ITE,-ONO.
For instance, the infinitive form of the verb "to eat" is "mangiARE", therefore it has the following conjugation at the simple present: io mangiO (I eat), tu mangI (you eat), lui/lei mangiA (he/she eats), noi mangIAMO (we eat), voi mangiATE (you eat), loro mangiANO (they eat).
You will see that if you take another verb with an infinitive form in -ARE, for example "trovARE" (to find), verb endings change in the same way: io trovO, tu trovI, lui/lei trovA, noi trovIAMO, voi trovATE, loro trovANO.
Unfortunately, there are also some irregular verbs.