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- "Le donne hanno cinture sulle…
"Le donne hanno cinture sulle gonne."
Translation:The women have belts on their skirts.
56 Comments
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"sulle gonne " means "on the skirts" the translation is "on their skirts" - where is "their"? it is same as in "tasca" ?
yep. in spanish (and its the same in italian i think) you generally use articles, not possesives, when talking about clothing and body parts, as long as its clear who you're talking about
And in Lithuanian. I am quite surprised of the similarity of lithuanian and italian grammar
Sorry for being a little bit out of topic, we know that the word "sulle" is always followed by the plural feminine noun. But once I've ever listened to the Italian aria "Il Baccio" (click: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24irhyFrQNI) which is the first lyric says, "Sulle...sulle labbra". Shouldn't it become "Sulle...sulle labbre" since we have known that "labbra" is a singular word? Mille grazie!^^
Thank you so much for this idea. I hadn't thought of it. Now I am listening to arias and getting the lyrics up in another window. What fun! I just finished swaying and whistling along with "Lascia ch'io pianga" with Renee Fleming...lovely. If anyone asks, well...I am learning Italian.
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Lovely aria, really. Music like that is a vortex that sucks me in. I went to listen to it and 30 minutes later I realize I was actually working on Italian at Duo, so I need to stop listen to all the lovely music YouTube queued up for me after Sumi Jo's singing. Certainly brightened up my day.
how poetic--"like a vortex that sucks me in"--I love that! She came on tour with our orchestra when we toured South Africa--now I wish I'd known some Italian so I could understand the words of her arias but the music conveys so much without words
I haven't ever heard an English-speaking woman say she had a belt over her skirt. 'On' the skirt works well for describing that the garment has a belt, and ' around' the skirt if you imagine the garment on.
The Italian word "gonna" for skirt seems to be related to the English word "gown"
Very useful, I struggled to make a connection with these words, but their are so often similarities to help you remember the meanings
I understand that the articles are important in Italian, and that in Italian it is understood that the skirts are theirs, but in English isn't it also appropriate to translate this as The women have belts on skirts.
Although its tempting to think a strictly literal translation should always be one of the accepted answers, it often doesn't make sense. For an extreme example, if someone wrote, "We just returned from visiting Our Lady", basically everyone would recognize that as a bad translation, even though "Notre Dame" literally translates to "Our Lady".
In other words, you should translate the intended (or understood) meaning in a way that's idiomatic to target language. (Converting meaning trumps using a literal word-for-word translation basically every time; after all, you're translating a sentence, not just a list of words.)
In this sentence, the Italian version means there is possession, even though it doesn't say "their". So the best translation conveys that meaning.
Anyway, I hope that was helpful.
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The fact though is that there is - or should be - a difference between possession and no possession, even in Italian. For example, what if the women are working in a clothing store and they put belts on the mannequins' dresses? Then it wouldn't be 'their dresses', but just 'dresses'.
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if Duolingo has the translation as The women have belts on their skirts - why wouldn't that be Le donne hanno cinture sulle loro gonne.
"Their skirts" sounds more natural in English but is not a literal translation. "The skirts" is a literal translation but sounds weird in English.
"The women have belts on their skirts" versus "The women have belts on the skirts"--you're right, it does sound more natural though it took your post! I'm still struggling with why in Italian the "their" is implied :(
I took 'cinture sulle gonne' to mean that the belts were part of the skirts, since in English, the phrase 'belts on their skirts' would mean that the belts are attached. So I shortened it to 'belted skirts' which would also be correct in English, but it was marked wrong. Is there a difference that I'm missing, or is it just not programmed to accept that?
Meaning I wrote the sentence as 'The women have belted skirts' in case that wasn't clear...
I wrote: "The women have their belts on the skirts." How is this actually wrong?
I translated this to, "The women have belts on skirts", and it looked awkward. That was until I realized that 'sulle' contains 'le'.
Now when I answered, Duolingo says correct answer is: "The women have belts on their skirts" How is this much different than what I put 1st?!
The "their" is important, because that's what the Italian sentence means. It may feel weird, but you should translate what it means, not what it says. :) See my response above for a much more thorough answer.
What is the difference between "sullo" and "sulle"? I see that the word sulle is followed by a feminine noun, however I am not sure when to use sullo?
Thank you!
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I would like to know why in this instance you don't use the definite article le before the belts? Yet is used in the sugar instance.
I was surprised to see there was no possessive pronoun and wondered why it was not written 'sulle loro gonne'.
"women" was not one of the words to select! I selected "The Gives Have Belts On Skirts" and it was correct!
maybe a stupid question, but why not 'le cinture'. I get you are not referring to specific ones, but is there a rule for use of the article? You cannot rely on English to give you a rule for the article because the use is much different. Thanks.
"The skirts" is a little less specific than "their skirts." Would the proper way to specify the skirts are theirs be "Le donne hanno cincture sulle loro gonne"?
