Common Italian collocation
| Literally | Light year |
| IPA pronunciation | /ˈanno ˈluːtʃe/ |
| You do NOT say |
Anno luce
Light year
What’s an anno luce?
It is not a period of time, a periodo di tempo, but a distance, una distanza.
It is basically the distance that light travels in one year. It is known that the speed of light is about 300.000.000 m/s, which you would read in Italian as trecento milioni di metri al secondo, three hundred million meters per second.
L’anno luce non definisce un periodo di tempo, ma una distanza.
The light year does not define a period of time, but a distance.
Because the universe is so vast, astronomical distances are calculated in light years, anni luce.
Note that anno, year, changes to anni, years. You can’t say anni luci in Italian in the plural because luce is used here as an uncountable noun.
If you want to ask how far is the distance between this and that object, you can ask…
Qual è la distanza da/tra…?
What’s the distance between…?
Quanto dista…?
How far away is…?
You can also use anno luce as a figure of speech to mean that something is much more advanced than something else or simply to mean that that we don’t yet have the means to achieve something in the foreseeable future.
Examples
Qual è la distanza tra la Terra e la Luna?
What is the distance between the Earth and the Moon?
La distanza tra le stelle si misura in anni luce.
The distance between the stars is measured in light years.
La Galassia di Andromeda dista circa 2 milioni e mezzo di anni luce.
The Andromeda galaxy is about 2.5 million light years away.
La nostra azienda è ad anni luce da qualsiasi altra impresa.
Our company is light years ahead of any other company.
Related lessons
- anno (year)
- luce (light)
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