Few additional questions

rigoletto

rigoletto

Buongiorno! :) 

While doing some flash cards today i came across a couple of other things that got my attention:

5.7
"La sua camera è pronta fra mezz'ora....."  which means "Your room will be ready in half an hour"

However, to me this reads as "His room is ready in half an hour....."

So after doing numerous lessons on rocket and learning, i thought it should be written:

"La tua camera sarà pronta fra mezz'ora....."



5.6
"Quello che volevo dire" what i wanted to say

I would like to know here how does "Quello che" - become "what"? Usually quello/a is "That". And usually you start your sentences Cosa, if it's "What" at the beginning, Does it become a different meaning when Quella is combined with other words?

Differences: Stamane/Stamattina
Other question i have here which is not part of rocket (so far in my lessons) is that I have seen stamane used around the internet as "This morning" instead of Stamattina. Can you use stamane anytime as you should with stamattina when referencing to this morning, or is it only able to be used in certain conditions?


Thanks
Lucia - Rocket Languages Tutor

Lucia - Rocket Languages Tutor

Ciao rigoletto!

Let's go in order:
In formal situations, such as in a hotel, at the train station or at a restaurant, people address each other with lei (also written with a capital letter, Lei). The conjugations used are those of the third, singular person: lui/lei. This means that lei (meaning she) and Lei (meaning formal you) have sometimes to be interpreted with the help of the context.

La sua camera è pronta, signore. Your room is ready, sir.
Luigi è pigro. La sua camera è sporca. Luigi is lazy. His room is dirty.

La tua camera è pronta belongs to an informal situation, because people address each other with tu only when they have been knowing each other for some time and have decided to go "the informal way".

Suo/sua can either be his/her or your. Always look at the context to interpret the sentence.

Now for your second question.
If we were to translate What I wanted to say word-for-word, we would get a completely different sentence in Italian, Quello (cosa) volevo dire, something along the line of That, I wanted to say. Quello che volevo dire could be translated as "That, which I wanted to say".
This is another situation in which Italian and English work in a different way to express the same message. You can find another example of this in:

Questo è quello che so. This is what I know. "This is that, which I know".

If you replace quello che with cosa, che cosa, you would here create a sentence that, as it is, could only be used as a question: Cosa volevo dire? What did I want to say?

Lui sa cosa fa. Lui sa quello che fa. He knows what he's doing.
Tutto quello che so. All that I know. "All that, that I know." Tutto cosa so.
Non so cosa fare. Non so quello che fare. I don't know what to do.

Unlike cosa, quello che can't introduce a question. So you can ask Cosa fai?, but you can't ask Quello che fai?. The only possible situation is:
- Ora vedi quello che faccio. Now you'll see what I'm going to do.
- Quello che fai? What you're going to do? *puzzled or scared loook*

It's a bit confusing, I know. But practice will make it easier!

Now for stamane.
Stamane (and stamani) is a synonym of stamattina and it's used in the very same way. It's pretty common in Tuscany, from what I know (da quello che so :)), and elsewhere you're more likely to find it in the written language.

Hope this helps!
Lucia
rigoletto

rigoletto

Grazie Lucia. Ho capito!! :) 

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