Italian All-in-One For Dummies (132 page)

Quale preferisci?
(
Which one do you prefer?
)

Quali compri?
(
Which ones are you buying?
)

Qual è [il] tuo?
(
Which one is yours?
)

When you use
quale
with
è
, you drop its final
e.
You do not, however, connect
qual
with
è
by adding an apostrophe.

Only
quanto
(
how much; how many
) has four forms:
quanto
(masculine, singular),
quanti
(masculine, plural),
quanta
(feminine, singular), and
quante
(feminine, plural).

Quanti libri compri?
(
How many books are you buying?
)

Quante portano uno zaino?
(
How many [girls] are carrying a backpack?
)

Quanto costa un telefonino?
(
How much does a cellphone cost?
)

Quanta bistecca vuoi?
(
How much steak do you want?
)

Providing Detailed Answers to Questions

To answer information questions (as opposed to yes/no questions), you need to listen very carefully. You have the vocabulary you need for your answer in the question. Keep in mind that the question word (
who, what, when, where, why, how
) is likely to begin the sentence; the content of the question (whose vocabulary you can appropriate) follows. Here's a sample information question with steps to answer it.

1. Listen carefully to the question:

Quando partiamo domani?
(
When are we leaving tomorrow?
)

2. Break the question into two parts:

Quando
(question word:
when
)
partiamo domani
(content:
are we leaving tomorrow
)
?

3. Start your answer with the vocabulary from the content.

Partiamo domani . . .
(
We are leaving . . .
)

4. Fill in your answer to the question
quando
(
when
).

Partiamo domani sera.
(
We are leaving tomorrow night.
)

You can answer this question in several ways; here are a couple of examples:

Non partiamo domani. Partiamo dopodomani.
(
We're not leaving tomorrow. We're leaving day after tomorrow.
)

Partiamo domani a mezzogiorno.
(
We're leaving tomorrow at noon.
)

You can even answer with a question of your own:

Partiamo domani?
(
We're leaving tomorrow?
)

Sometimes, you need to reverse the word order so that the subject precedes the verb in your answer.

Dovè il museo?
(
Where's the museum?
)
Il museo è all'angolo.
(
It's on the corner.
)

Quando partono loro?
(
When are they leaving?
)
Loro partono domani.
(
They are leaving tomorrow.
)

To answer a question involving quantities, you replace the question word with an amount or a number, as in these examples:

Quante persone vanno alla spiaggia?
(
How many people are going to the beach?
)
Tre persone vanno alla spiaggia.
(
Three people are going to the beach.
)

Quanti ponti ci sono a Firenze?
(
How many bridges are there in Florence?
)
Ci sono cinque ponti a Firenze.
(
There are five bridges in Florence.
)

For questions designed to elicit specific answers from you (about you), you need to change the verb in the question before using it in the answer. In English, when someone asks
Are you
a student?
you answer with a different form of the verb,
I am
a student.

Answering Questions Negatively

In Italian, you can use two, even three, negative words in the same sentence without incurring funny looks from native speakers. Double negatives are the norm, not a broken rule. For example:

Non ho mai fatto nulla di cattivo.
(
I've never done anything bad.
) (Literally:
I have not never done nothing bad.
)

The following lists some of the most common negative adverbs. The spaces indicate that a verb is needed for the adverb to cozy up to.

non _____ mai
(
never
)

non _____ nessuno
(
no one
)

non _____ niente, nulla
(
nothing
)

non _____ più
(
no more; no longer
)

non _____ neache, nemmeno, neppure
(
not even
)

non _____ né . . . né . . .
(
neither . . . nor . . .
)

non _____ mica
(
not really
)