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- Topic: Italian >
- "Sono biscotti al cioccolato."
42 Comments
Un biscotto di cioccolato would mean the biscuit was literally made of chocolate rather than having chocolate added to it.
I'm confused as to what the translation for "al" actually is. Is it "of the"?
i think it's used more in this context as an expression, something that can't be translated literally
Yes.
al literally means "to the"
But it can be used in expressions where English would use: "of", "of the", "with the", and so on. It's one of those things that you just have to learn whether the correct prepositions to use is 'a', 'di', "in", etc... because they don't always map to their English equivalent.
This sentence (Sono bicotti al cioccolato) is probably closest to the English meaning of They are cookies with chocolate (ie cookies with chocolate bits in them). With is usually 'di' in Italian. But you use "al and not "del" (del = di + il) in this situation just because...
(Actually I don't know if there's a reason why. When I studied Italian at uni we were told you just have to learn them - sometimes they match up to the English choice, sometimes they don't)
Wouldn't it be correct English to translate it "It's the chocolate cookies" (although cookies are plural)? I'm not a native English speaker.
I used the word biscuit and got flagged as incorrect, when thats my country's word for it
Duolingo is an American company, and over here a biscuit is something very different.
If "Sono" is at the beginning does that mean "They are"? When would it be "The cookies are chocolate"?
I biscotti sono cioccolato, or something more of that form. Kind of similar to the difference in English.
Remember Loron sono ragazzi . I guess we can leave out Loro or Io sometimes considering they understand the context is plural
In British English, maybe. In the USA, biscuits are something very, very different. Think of savory scones.
1048
Why is it that the phrase "they are the grapes" uses è while this phrase uses sono? The explanation in the post regarding the grapes is that for objects, essi is used. However, wouldn't that apply to cookies as well?
In English, we count the individual grapes and use the plural. In Italian, they look at the bunch as use the singular. Like we have "peas" but "corn".
- 1048
Thanks! Even though I've read so many of the posts under the grapes discussion and seen this before, for some reason your explanation just made the verb conjugation part of it click for me.
How come "chocolate" is not in plural as well when cookies are?
"Biscotti ai chocolata" instead of "biscotti al cioccolato"?
Because "chocolate" is not an adjective, it is a noun. Only adjectives change to reflect nouns. Nouns do not change with other nouns.
In Italian, subject pronouns are mostly optional. You can almost always tell from the verb whether the subject is 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person, singular or plural.
"Essere" is irregular and the "io" conjugation is the same as the "loro" conjugation, but since it's a linking verb, the subject complement in the predicate must agree with the subject. Since "biscotti" is plural, the subject must also be plural (also, context tells you it's very unlikely that someone is saying "I am chocolate cookies").
https://www.italian-verbs.com/italian-verbs/conjugation.php?parola=essere
This is teaching you that sometimes it is best to not have a subject pronoun at all.
