Breakdown of Sentiamo il poliziotto fischiare e vediamo l'ambulanza arrivare.
e
and
vedere
to see
arrivare
to arrive
sentire
to hear
l'ambulanza
ambulance
il poliziotto
policeman
fischiare
to whistle
Questions & Answers about Sentiamo il poliziotto fischiare e vediamo l'ambulanza arrivare.
Why does Italian use the infinitives fischiare and arrivare instead of the gerund forms to mean 'whistling' and 'arriving'?
When using verbs of perception like sentire (to hear) and vedere (to see), Italian describes the observed action using the infinitive. Even though English uses an '-ing' word, using the Italian gerund here (like vediamo l'ambulanza arrivando) is incorrect.
Could I change the word order and say sentiamo fischiare il poliziotto?
Yes, absolutely! With perception verbs, it is very common to place the infinitive immediately after the main verb, followed by the noun doing the action. Sentiamo fischiare il poliziotto (literally 'we hear to whistle the policeman') means exactly the same thing and sounds perfectly natural.
Do I need to use a preposition like a or di before the infinitives in this sentence?
No. Unlike many other verbs that require a preposition to connect to an infinitive (like iniziare a or decidere di), perception verbs connect directly to the infinitive with no preposition in between.
I originally learned sentire as 'to feel'. How do I know it means 'to hear' here?
Sentire is a general verb for physical perception. Depending on the context, it can mean 'to hear', 'to feel', 'to smell', or 'to taste'. Since the object is a policeman whistling (fischiare), hearing is the only sense that makes logical sense here.
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