Lui ha dei cavalli.
What does dei mean? The sentence comes from Duolingo, and it translates to
He has horses.
I looked up dei in my dictionary, but I am still confused as to what it means in the sentence above.
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Sign up to join this communityLui ha dei cavalli.
What does dei mean? The sentence comes from Duolingo, and it translates to
He has horses.
I looked up dei in my dictionary, but I am still confused as to what it means in the sentence above.
Dei in this case is the so called articolo partitivo (partitive article). It means an undefined number of, and can be translated in English with some, a few, or, as in your example, nothing at all. the name partitivo expresses the concept that the quantity you are speaking about is a part of something that is numerable, and is approximate or uncertain, but greater than one. You use degli instead of dei whith the same rules that apply to the article gli instead of i.
You can think of the partitive article as the plural of the indefinite article, so, if you say:
ho scritto un libro
you might also say
ho scritto dei libri