"Gli elefanti mangiano pane."
Translation:The elephants eat bread.
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It also depends on the first letter of the next word, if I'm not mistaken. For instance: Gli elefanti vs. i bicchieri (the elephants vs. the glasses) gli is for plural and vowel and i is for consonant. Please let me know if this is correct and helps.
If the singular article is 'il,' it changes to 'i.' 'lo' and 'l'' change to 'gli'
And there I was thinking the elephants were invading Ireland. Seems they are thundering across Italy as well...
Is 'The elephants eat the bread' not correct? There seems to be some inconsistencies as to whether or not the article is acceptable, unless there are some rules I'm not aware of.
I believe it's also because here they aren't talking about a specific bread, so the is too precise.
I would like to take this example as one of many which occur across DL Italian. If I take a closely related language, French, which I know and speak well, you would never say "Les éléphants mangent pain". That would sound like a strained anglicism. You would say "Les éléphants mangent le pain", or at least "Les éléphants mangent du pain". A noun in this context is always preceded by an article.
Is this not so in Italian? Or is this "bevono acqua" not "bevono l'acqua" construction really proper Italian?
Can an Italian native speaker advise?
My native language is English, but I was told that the use of definite articles in statements such as this are similar to how it is in English, except opposite.
In English, a general statement of habit omits the definite article: I eat bread. I drink water. In Italian, a general statement of habit uses the definite article: Mangio il pane. Bevo l'acqua.
In English, a statement referring to a specific instance uses the definite article: I eat the bread. I drink the water. In Italian, a statement referring to a specific instance omits the definite article: Mangio pane. Bevo acqua.
The elephants eat the bread should be correct, it would be in other examples!
In Italian the definite article is a bit different: it can be used to indicate a general category. That's why sometimes you'll see the article present in the Italian sentence but not in the English one.
"are eating bread" IS acceptable. Italian doesn't have the present continuous tense, but that doesn't mean it can't be translated into that tense in appropriate contexts!
It does have present continuous, but it's just not used as often. It uses the verb "stare".
Gli elefanti stanno mangiando pane.
For singular nouns:
LO: for all masculine nouns beginning with s+consonant or z.
IL: for all other masculine nouns starting with a consonant.
LA: with feminine nouns starting with any consonant.
L’: before masculine or femmenine nouns beginning with a vowel.
Most -- not all, but most -- verbs in Italian are regular, which means if you know what suffix the infinitive ends with, you can apply a simple template and know how to conjugate it.
Mangiare is a regular -are verb, which means you can apply the first template:
https://i.imgur.com/8atYu1Y.png
MANGIARE
io mangio
tu mangi
lui/lei mangia
noi mangiamo
voi mangiate
loro mangiano
The stem already has an i at the end, so it gets absorbed into the "tu" suffix. There is no double-i verb ending.
There is absolutely no consistency when it comes to 'pane'. Sometimes it's 'il pane'and sometimes 'pane'. Can anyone explain, please?
If they generally eat bread its pane But if they were to eat one specific piece of bread it would be il pane But thats exactly the same in english
I misspelled elephants with an f
I guess thats an intolerable issue for the meaning of the sentence
What's next Duolingo? Le tigri mangiano pane?? (Correct me if the sentence is wrong btw lol)
My first language is not English, and so I wrote elefants instead of elephants. How well I write English should not affect my understanding for Italian.
