Italian ⋙ Italian A1

Welcome to our Italian grammar course for beginners! Today we're going to talk about the grammatical gender in Italian.

In Italian, all nouns have a grammatical gender. It means they are categorized as either masculine (maschile) or feminine (femminile) nouns. Understanding the concept of gender is important because it affects the forms of determiners, adjectives, and articles used with nouns.

Here are some key points about the difference between masculine and feminine grammatical genders in Italian.

Masculine (Maschile)

Masculine nouns are associated with the grammatical category of masculinity, and they use masculine articles and adjectives.

Singular nouns (Sostantivi singolari)

Masculine nouns often end in -o, -e, or a consonant, such as:

Nouns referring to male beings or professions are typically masculine:

Days of the week and seasons are also masculine:

Plural nouns (Sostantivi plurale)

Italian nouns can be singular (referring to one person or thing) or plural (referring to more than one person or thing). The plural forms of masculine nouns are generally formed by replacing -o/-e with -i in the singular form:

Feminine (Femminile)

Feminine nouns are associated with the grammatical category of femininity and use feminine articles and adjectives.

Feminine nouns in Italian frequently end in -a, -e, such as:

Nouns referring to female beings or professions are generally feminine:

Countries, cities, and rivers are mostly feminine:

Plural nouns (Sostantivi plurale)

The plural forms of feminine nouns are generally formed by replacing -a with -e in the singular form:

Notes (Appunti)

The gender of a noun influences the agreement of articles, adjectives, and pronouns. For example, il libro (the book) uses the masculine article il, while la. Adjectives also change their endings to match the gender of the noun they modify, such as "un grande libro" (a big book) or "una grande casa" (a big house). If you want to know more, please read about Italian articles on our website.

Exceptions (Eccezioni)

It's important to note that the gender of a noun is not always predictable based on its form or ending. There are many exceptions, irregular nouns, and borrowed words that may not follow the usual patterns. That's why we advise you to study the gender of nouns in order to use the appropriate articles and adjectives correctly.
For example:

The following situations may also occur:

As you can see, a masculine noun in singular (il braccio) transforms into a feminine noun in plural (le braccia).

Summary

Remember, learning noun genders may seem challenging at first, but with consistent practice and exposure to the language, you'll become more confident and fluent. We are waiting for you in the next lesson, where we will talk about Italian singular and plural nouns. Good luck!