Breakdown of Con questo rumore, non ci stiamo capendo niente.
questo
this (masculine)
non
not
con
with
il rumore
the noise
niente
nothing
capirci
to grasp / understand
Questions & Answers about Con questo rumore, non ci stiamo capendo niente.
Why is there a ci in non ci stiamo capendo? Why not just say non stiamo capendo?
Here, ci is part of the pronominal verb capirci. While capire just means "to understand," adding ci (ci attualizzante) grounds the verb in the current reality, emphasizing your capacity to make sense of a specific situation. Non ci capisco niente is a very common idiomatic way to say "I don't understand a thing about what's going on."
Could ci here be a reciprocal pronoun, meaning "we aren't understanding each other"?
Technically, ci stiamo capendo alone could mean "we are understanding each other." However, the addition of niente ("nothing/anything") rules that out, because you wouldn't say "we are understanding each other nothing." Because of niente, ci is definitely acting as a particle tying the verb to the context (the noise), meaning "we aren't making sense of anything."
Can I attach the ci to the end of the verb instead?
Yes! When using the continuous tense (stare + gerund), you have two options for pronoun placement. You can place ci before the conjugated verb, as in non ci stiamo capendo, or you can drop the final "e" of the gerund and attach it to the end: non stiamo capendoci niente. Both are perfectly correct and common.
Just to review, why do we use both non and niente in this sentence?
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