Learn about noun gender
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Intro |
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| Hi everybody! Marika here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Italian questions. |
| The Question |
| The question for this lesson is: What are masculine and feminine nouns, and how are they different? |
| Explanation |
| In Italian, all nouns have a gender. A noun can either be masculine or feminine. That applies to plural nouns too and to all the words that can modify nouns, such as articles and adjectives. |
| Other Romance languages have a similar system of masculine and feminine nouns. It’s a trait that comes from Latin. The gender depends on the origin of the Latin word. |
| English doesn’t have masculine and feminine nouns, though. So the easiest way for English speakers to tell a noun’s gender is by looking at the last letter of the noun. |
| If a noun ends with -o in the singular and -i in the plural, it’s usually masculine. If a noun ends with -a in the singular and -e in the plural, it’s usually feminine. |
| For example, sedia, meaning “chair,” ends with an -a, so it’s feminine: la sedia. In the plural: le sedie. |
| Libro, meaning “book,” ends with an -o, so it’s masculine: il libro. And in the plural: i libri, ending with an -i. |
| The -o, -i for masculine and -a, -e for feminine rule doesn’t always work, though. Most of the time, but not always. There are some exceptions: like la moto, meaning “the bike,” which is feminine, and il problema, meaning “the problem,” which is actually masculine. |
| To make things even more complicated, there’s a third class of nouns ending with -e in the singular and -i in the plural. These can be masculine or feminine, depending on the word. |
| That’s why it’s important to learn nouns and their respective genders together with the right definite articles. The definite articles are different for each gender, so they’ll help you remember. |
| For example, take bicchiere, meaning “glass,” which is in that third category of nouns ending in -e. The right article for bicchiere is il, so il bicchiere is masculine. |
| How about nave meaning “ship”? The right article for this one is la, so la nave is feminine. |
| Again, there’s unfortunately no formula to find the right gender. The Latin origins of words go way back, and often people don’t know why some words have a certain gender today. |
| Your best guide is going to be our first rule: singular -o and plural -i for masculine, and singular -a, plural -e for feminine. Just try to memorize the articles with the nouns, and before you know it, the gender classifications will come naturally to you. |
Outro |
| Whew! That’s it for this lesson. |
| Please send in any more questions you have, and I’ll try to answer them! |
| A presto! “See you soon!” |
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