in some cases you use the formal Lei= you, and in others you do not. When not specified some questions are marked as incorrect when they may in fact be correct.
Hi Badgolfer,
Thanks for your message. Would it be possible to see an example of one of the sentences you mentioned? From what I understood, it is not clear whether it should be formal or not, correct?
Hi Georgiana,
Sorry for the late reply.
Yes, when some questions contain the English “you”, the “correct” answer in Italian sometimes will use the third person singular Lei instead of the second person singular “tu”. The
Examples:
Wouldn’t you like to eat? Cloze Correct Ans: Non vorebbe mangiare (lei form) vs informal tu vorresti- and which would be marked as wrong
Where is your father? Cloze Correct answer: Dove si trova Sua padre? and not …tua padre
Just not sure if we should presume the Formal you (Lei) is requested in a question, although sometimes the “tu” form works ok.
Thanks for any assistance,
Badgolfer
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Hi Badgolfer,
Mike here, jumping in for Georgiana. That ambiguity is indeed a known issue with Clozemaster that we’re working to resolve.
What do you think would be the best way to fix without having to manually go through each individual sentence?
- Do you think there’s a well-defined set of formal vs. informal words in Italian such that we could add hints automatically? For example is it just lei/tu and sua/tua (and perhaps a few more pairings), then we could just show a hint saying ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ whenever one of those words is the missing word?
- Would it be helpful if you could add your own notes, or update translation?
- Something else?
Interested to hear what you think. Thanks again!
Hi Mike,
Sorry for the delay in responding- not n this everyday. Thanks for getting back
I think your first bullet point makes sense but may not be easily implemented. Various verb endings in both the singular and plural conjugations could also be either formal or informal and could become voluminous…,the way CM is set up now, it’s just a roll of the dice, as to which version is correct. Perhaps some blanket wording up front for the missing choice, might be helpful? e.g., : "Unless otherwise indicated the response should be presumed to be (formal/informal),…,however, as you say, there would be a lot of questions that would have to be manually scrutinized/scrubbed for this suggestion to work…
Otherwise, your second bullet may in fact be more practical to implement,… if the system allows manual input of suggestions (I think it currently exists for alternative verb and noun synonyms), then perhaps a data base for formal and Informal responses) could be included and eventually added to the existing data. This would also mean strongly suggesting input from users, especially since most of us are intermediate to advanced level parties and may be seeing the same issues.
Sorry, but at this time I have no other original ideas or suggestions- but if i do get an epiphany one day…
Again, thanks for responding
Badgolfer