53 Comments
How do you know when to use "gli" or "i" when making the article plural?
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- 1855
gli is the plural of l' and lo
i is the plural of il
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.
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If the singular article is 'il,' it changes to 'i.' 'lo' and 'l'' change to 'gli'
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.
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I think it's because it says "mangiano pane," not "magiano il pane." If there's no article in the original, you shouldn't have to add one!
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I believe it's also because here they aren't talking about a specific bread, so the is too precise.
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And there I was thinking the elephants were invading Ireland. Seems they are thundering across Italy as well...
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Maybe if you gave bread to an elephant he will at least taste it.
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I too asked this question. I've never heard of an elephant eating bread and I couldn't find anything about local practices, like the myth we have about elephants loving peanuts. There is a type of pastry called elephant ear bread, but that's the closest reference I could find. This sentence is impractical. I'm never going to say something like that unless I write a children's novel in Italian about an elephant who loves bread...
Similar to the "the men write in the sugar" that I've seen multiple times
I don't think it matters if they do or not. They are merely teaching a sentence
The elephants eat the bread should be correct, it would be in other examples!
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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.
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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.
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It doesn't matter whether elephants actually eat bread or monkeys actually read books. Duolingo is teaching us grammar and vocabulary, giving us the tools to put our own sentences together.
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i litteraslly said that my microphone does not work yet they kept on making these questions for me. hmph!
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You can got to settings and turn off speaking exersizes and when it works again you can turn it back on.
errot on system keep typing exactly what answer in needs and keeps comming back incorrect!
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- 1855
No, "le" is plural feminine, and it's more complicated than that.
I wrote exactly the correct answer and the robot said I was wrong ...
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Duo glitches sometimes. If you're positive you didn't make any typos, next time this happens flag it and select "My answer should have been accepted."
Thank you for your advice, which I will gladly follow next time.
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So you can learn verb conjugation and the intricacies of the definite article.
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I'm so confused, "I wrote the elephants eat bread" yet says I used the wrong word? what?!?!
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"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!
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- 1855
It does have present continuous, but it's just not used as often. It uses the verb "stare".
Gli elefanti stanno mangiando pane.
