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- Topic: Italian >
- "La ragazza beve un tè."
67 Comments
It seems reasonable to my ears. You do get different types of tea and it's not uncommon for people in the UK to say "I'll have a tea".
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I am from New England and we often say 'a tea', or 'a coffee'-usually followed by how we would like it (lemon, no sugar...)
Im British. This is quite a normal thing for us to say. We say both "I'll have tea" and "I'll have A tea". A bit like saying "I'll have a drink". We might also say "I'll have a coffee/beer/wine". I cant speak for everyone in Britain, but "I'll have tea" would be used more if someone's just asked what you want to drink, so you already know that a drink is being talked about. Where as "I'll have a tea" or "Can I have a tea" would be used if you were asked a less specific question like "can I get you anything?" If you were in a bar and caught the bartenders attention and said "can I have beer" it would sound weird! But "can I have a beer" would sound ok.
The girl drinks a tea. Sounds quite unnatural though. I mean have you ever heard anyone say it?
Yes, I hear and say it all the time. It may be a British thing, however.
US English tends to cut words out that aren't absolutely necessary (think of 201 being pronounced "two hundred one" vs "two hundred and one" in the UK.
Thank you very much! Sure, it depends on situation, especially in conversational language. But unfortunately, when someone is taking exam in English, he's supposed to use general rule.
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A cup of tea, a pot of tea, a green tea, but 'I'll have a tea' without defining the tea, I cannot say I have ever heard that.
Works for me. Perhaps it's a difference in US vs. UK tea-drinking culture? I read this as "The girl drinks a (glass/bottle of iced) tea."
Definitely not in usage in the United States. Sounded a little strange to me.
That's because "tea" is (or better said used to be) uncountable ... but grammar rules are changing and nowadays it is really possible to say "a tea" which means "a cup of tea" ... the same goes with coffee :)
I'm not British but I definitely agree. ' A tea' sounds so wrong.. it doesn't just sound wrong, it's soo wrong.
I am from the US, and it seems fine to me. I immediately thought the sentence is distinguishing that what she has is one of the varieties of teas available, instead of a coffee.
I thought the same when I read it, but I know spanish also and spanish literal translation its just as it should be
Usage may vary, but it is grammatically correct. Additionally, it is just an exercise to learn the words. It also is very accurate Italian, which is the real end goal of doing the Italian section.
In English, we would say "The girl drinks a cup of tea".
"The girl drinks a tea." sounds more like American usage.
In AE, we might order "a tea," but it would usually include the type and maybe size: "I would like a small mint tea." However, "The girl drinks a tea" sounds very foreign to my AE ears
In America we pretty much would never say "a tea." To me it sounds incredibly British, so this is a funny comparison.
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Not American, at least not West Coast American. We'd say a cup of tea. But if it's coffee, you can have a coffee. Seattle culture, you know.
"The girl drinks some tea" was marked wrong for me. I would like to know why and how it should be said, too.
This is only a literal translation. If this site is going to build true fluency, it must take into account idomatic differences. In Italian, it is ok to say "un te", but in order to get the most accurate and grammatically correct translation, it must take into account the proper, not just the direct, translation.
In this case - "the tea" would be better, and "some tea" would be most proper.
"a" really just means "one". Although there is a bit of confusion as to saying "a tea", as seen in the rest of this discussion: if we use an example of, say, "a biscuit" we really mean one biscuit. They just put "un" in there to distinguish between "the biscuit"and "a biscuit".... except they're talking about tea...
I'm American. Doesn't it sound pompous for me to state my nationality to begin my comment, as if that makes me some sort of authority?
Americans and other English monolinguals are a bunch of complainers about how hard are other languages to learn, so no.
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People often do this so that people realise that they are viewing the situation as someone familiar with American English, as opposed to British (or any other variant). It would only be pompous if you stated that AE is the most correct variant.
No, more like a serving of tea (a cup of tea, a glass of (iced) tea
the type of tea served doesn't matter here. The subject (she) simply drinks one.
The translation according to Duo is " The girl drinks one tea" this is obviously wrong surely?
Not everywhere in the world. Just to add to confusion, if you say 'We will have tea soon' in Australia, it means 'We will have dinner soon'. And I need to further clarify, because in rural Australia, in my experience, 'dinner' is the mid-day meal and 'tea' is the evening meal. If we are sitting around and feeling like a hot drink, we would say ANY of 'Would you like a tea? Would you like a coffee? Would you like tea? Would you like coffee? How about a cuppa? Or, simply Coffee? or Tea?
Duolingo also rejects "The girl's drinking tea" . But a literal translation always sounds clumsy
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"Drinking" is the wrong type of verb. That would translate to "sta bevendo", which is not introduced until later. You must stick to the simple present here.
Sorry but the English is wrong here. Never in my 41 years has anyone referred to "a tea".
It will not let me go to the third lesson, either fix it or i find a different source to learn by
I have an issue with the program counting off for accent marks. How do you type an accent mark on a QWERTY keyboard? (On my phone, the best I can do is this: `e. ) :(
On a Mac computer, using [Option E, E] gives é.
Using [Option + the key to the lefts of the Z on a British-style QWERTY keyboard, then E] gives è. German keyboards put Y in that lower left position.
On a phone, you should be able to get an accented letter with a long press, rather than a tap.
If not, you can install an additional keyboard. (Gboard is a keyboard that definitely does this)
The girl drinks a tea - sounds very unnatural to me. "The girl is drinking a cup of tea" Much better
"Some tea" just sounds more natural to me then "a tea", although there are different types of tea. Which indefinite article am I supposed to use, in this case?
I think the main questions here are- is this a natural sentence in Italian (i.e. is it a usual way to express this in Italian)? and how many translations of this does sentence DL accept? As a native English speaker from New Zealand I paused before answering, as the presence or absence of the 'a' in this sentence would be very context driven for me. The DL translation is not wrong and the comments from English speakers other than American show this. However, for non native English speakers, I suggest the two most universal translations for this would be ' The girl drinks tea' (i.e. no 'a') and 'the girls drinks a cup of tea'. I think DL accepts both.
