Word
La mamma consola il bambino che piange.
Meaning
The mom consoles the child who is crying.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of La mamma consola il bambino che piange.
il bambino
the child
che
who, that (relative pronoun)
la mamma
the mom
piangere
to cry
Questions & Answers about La mamma consola il bambino che piange.
The English translation says 'who is crying'. Why doesn't the Italian sentence use the progressive form che sta piangendo?
In Italian, the simple present tense (piange) is frequently used to describe ongoing actions, which often translates to the English present continuous ('is crying'). You absolutely could say che sta piangendo to heavily emphasize that the crying is happening right at this exact moment, but the simple present is completely natural and very common here.
If we change 'consoles the child' to 'is consoling him' using this lesson's progressive grammar, where does the pronoun lo go?
When using the progressive form (stare + gerund), direct object pronouns like lo can go in two places. You can attach it to the end of the gerund (La mamma sta consolandolo) or place it before the conjugated verb stare (La mamma lo sta consolando). Both are perfectly correct!
Why do we use che to mean 'who' here, instead of chi?
Che is a relative pronoun that connects a clause to a specific noun that was just mentioned. It can mean 'who', 'whom', 'that', or 'which'. Chi, on the other hand, means 'he who' or 'the person who' and is used when there is no specific noun mentioned beforehand (for example, Chi piange è triste - 'He who cries is sad'). Since il bambino is explicitly mentioned right before the pronoun, we must use che.
Does consolare take a direct or indirect object?