Strange singles

There are a few times when Italian uses the singluar when we, as English speakers, would use or expect the plural. This can be counter-intuitive, and like anything counter-intuitive, often leads to mistakes/difficulties for us.

Like most things I do around here, I'm not going to list off every possible example, just the ones that come to mind or prompt me to write an article. If you guys know of any examples, please feel free to comment. I say this because there are really only 2 examples that I want to talk about, which are VERY common:

1) Qualche - always takes the singular. It means "some" in the sense of "some thing", not as a quantity (like "some food", which would be "del cibo"). You might not think this is so strange, but I promise you that once in a while when you go to use it you'll catch yourself wanting to use the plural for whatever word comes next, and will have to go to the "grammar bank" to explicitly think of the "only singular" rule.

For a handy example, we can go to the title of a 1965 film, which I would translate to "For a few more dollars": "Per qualche dollaro in più". Note that "dollaro" is singular, though you would almost certainly translate it in the plural in english.

2) Gente - is a singular noun, even though it means "people", which is an inherently plural noun in english. This is always very tough for me, and it's one of several cases where I must "fly by grammar"- that is, do what I know is correct based on grammar knowledge instead of what I feel is correct. This really comes into play when "la gente" is the subject of a sentence, and does something, because that noun must, of course, be singular.

I could give some examples, but I suggest you head over to "google.it" and search for "la gente". You'll immediately see what I'm talking about. A few of the results that stood out to me:

«Pantheon chiude» concerto interrotto e la gente viene cacciata - "Pantheon Closed", concert interrupted and people chased out. "Chased out" might be a bit aggressive, but the point here is that you use the singular "la gente" instead of the plural that we'd use in english

"Spero che la gente torni ad esserci vicina" - "I hope that people come back to support us" - This phrase comes from a soccer player about a victory. My translation obviously isn't literal, but captures the sentiment. "Torni" is the singular, 3rd person, subjunctive of "tornare". It's subjunctive because it follows "spero che". The important part, though, is how "la gente" is used.

These are just a few small examples of this. I encourage you to explore by typing different phrases into google.it and see what shows up, or investigating more by searching the excellent forums at wordreference.com.

Alla prossima...