Italian nouns are an essential part of the language and are used to name people, places, things, and ideas. Understanding how Italian nouns work is crucial for building sentences and expressing yourself accurately.
Italian nouns have grammatical gender, which means they are classified as masculine or feminine. Determining the gender of a noun is important because it affects the form of articles, adjectives, and pronouns that accompany the noun. Unfortunately, there are no set rules for determining gender, so it's best to learn the gender of each noun as you go. However, there are some general tendencies:
Italian, like many languages, has irregular nouns that don't follow the regular patterns. These nouns may have irregular gender, irregular plurals, or both. Some common examples include "uomo" (man), which is masculine, and "mano" (hand), which is feminine.
Some nouns can take on the form of masculine or feminine, such as autore(M) and autrice(F). Usually these cases occur when a noun is a person's profession, such as: write, doctor, etc. or boy, girl, child etc. The noun, in this case will agree with the gender of the person it is referring to.
Italian nouns can be singular or plural. Making a noun plural usually involves changing the ending, although there are some irregular plural forms. Here are the general rules for forming plurals:
Preserving Ending Sound
When pluralizing Italian words, it's important to preserve the ending sound of the word when pluralized. The following guide can be used:
Greek Endings
Italian borrows a few Greek words, which can be determined by their usual "ma" and "ta" endings, such as "problema". Greek words always defer to masculine and have their ending replaced with an "i".
Exceptions
Not every noun follows these rules. Here are the exceptions for the words used within our review and study decks.
Singular | Plural | English |
uovo | uova | egg(s) |
lenzuolo | lenzuola | sheet(s) |
ala | ali | wing(s) |
farmacia | farmacia | pharmacy(ies) |
uomo | uomini | man|men |
tempio | templi | temple(s) |
labbro | labbra | lip(s) |
dio | dei | god(s) |
dito | dita | finger(s) |
zio | zii | uncles(s) |
signore | signori | gentleman(men) |
signora | le signore | lady|ladies |
problema | problemi | problem |