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- "Le gatte bevono latte di mat…
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Why not "nella" here? "Di mattina" should mean "of the morning", shouldn't it?
Yes, but "di" without article is also used to introduce a generic time with seasons, days of the week, phases of the day and so on; for instance "d'estate", "di venerdì", "di sera". It's especially common for repetitive actions, but not exclusively.
Apparently the use of "di" without the article (della) can be used to "introduce a generic time with seasons", times of day, etc. I guess it'd be "milk of morning" otherwise; the "the" probably helps solidify possession.
Why is this "gatte" and not "gatti"? If I'm not mistaken, cat = gatto, right?
Cat can be both male (gatto, pl. gatti) or female (gatta, pl. gatte); when unsure, the masculine is preferred.
But, then, why haven't Duolingo preferred the masculine? If we don't know which cats drink milk in the morning, then why wasn't it displayed as "I gatti bevono latte di mattina"? Sorry, but I really can't understand it so far.
The exercise is in Italian, so the choice of feminine implies that the speaker knows; when translating from English you could be uncertain and end up picking a generic masculine.
I wrote the morning's milk...what's wrong with this translation? Would morning's milk be della mattina? otherwise di mattina mean's in the morning? Why not alla mattina ?
Yes, if it had been possessive, it would have been della. Also, that just sounds weird to my ears. And I'm not positive, I'm just going off of other discussions, but alla supposedly works. It's just not often used. I think it would be better to use just a or di.
I think "della mattina" would be morning's milk, while "di mattina" means "in the morning". I made that mistake too..
To make it even more confusing, when I had this exercise in learning, as opposed to strengthening, they said "mornings, the cats drink milk" but when I used mornings, it counted it wrong...
In my previous exercise, there was a similar sentence "Bevo caffe alla mattina" and that was translated as I drink coffee in the morning.
Why isn't this "alla mattina" and "di mattina"? I can't tell the difference in usage since both sentences are pretty much the same except one is "I drink..." and the other is "The cats drink..." Thanks in advance for your help.
511
di mattina implies regularly nnot a one off. I put "in the mornings" which is perfectly good English English - why marked wrong?
I think it would have been better to say: Di mattina, le gatte bevono latte. Like this, you show when the cats drink the milk. In the original phrase, it gives me the impession that the milk somehow belongs to the morning, is of the morning which is kind of strange.
In another exercise it was " Lavoro a mattina." So, are "di mattina" and "a mattina" interchangeable?
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Because the sentence is about "mollies" (female cats).
Due seems to be unaware¹ that it could use the (English) gender specific words for cat:
- Il Gatto - The tomcat. (Male cat, singular)
- I gatti - The tomcats. (Male cats, plural)
- La gatta - The molly. (Female cat, singular)
- Le gatte - The mollies. (Female cats, plural)
¹ Unaware, or decided that gender-specific words for animals are
not widely enough known, as courses in English might be taken
by many non native English speakers.
well, too many grammar rules and ❤❤❤❤ in a short time.. this lesson is not so easy to remember as well as the last one with delle dalle sulle and other billion of words
