If you take a closer look at construction like "niente di bello", "rien de beau", "nada hermoso", "nothing beautiful", "nichts Schönes" you see that the philosophies behind these constructions are different. Italian and French ("niente di bello" / "rien de beau" => literally: nothing of the beautiful) assume a collective (the beautiful in general) and of this beautiful there is nothing. Spanish, English and German see it in a different way. In these languages nada / nothing / nichts is an indefinite pronoun, stands for something and this something has an attribute which characterizes it. The constructions are completely different: There is nothing beautiful <=> Nothing that is beautiful. Although the English, German and Spanish construction is correct, they are not very logical from a grammatical point of view or in other words they are contrary to the system because normally a pronoun can't have an adjective (~I see the angry him~). From a grammatical point of view the French and Spanish structure is more logical.
Structure of the kind "Non c'è niente da mangiare", "Il n'y a rien à manger", "No hay nada para comer", "There is nothing to eat" are very strange from a grammatical point of view. This kind of structure is not difficult to use, you hear them one time and afterwards you will be able to use them. There is no problem from a practical point of view, but from a theoretical one. Structures like these are, in theory, complicated.
Non c' è niente da mangiare. |
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=> Non c' è niente che si possa mangiare. (Non c' è niente che possa essere mangiato.) |
There is nothing to eat. |
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=> There is nothing that could be eaten. (There is nothing that can be eaten.) |
Actually this type of sentence corresponds to a sentence in passive voice but has nothing to do with the construction we already know.
The construction is similar to this one, which we have already seen.
È un problema da risolvere. => È un problema che si deve risolvere. |
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This problem is to be resolved. |
But this construction is not only another way to form the passive voice, it expresses obligation as well, what is not the case in the construction we have seen before (Niente da mangiare.)
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