Nouns (I nomi)

Practice: Nouns

A noun can be a person, place, object, or idea. Examples of English nouns are boy, Italy, pen, car, and love. In Italian, all nouns have a gender, masculine or feminine. The noun’s gender determines the forms of other words nearby, such as articles and adjectives. Most nouns appear in singular or plural forms. These forms determine not only articles and adjectives, but often the form of the verb as well.

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Gender (Il genere)

So when you learn a new noun, how do you know the gender? Most Italian nouns ending in -o are masculine (e.g. ragazzo, albergo, vino), and most ending in -a are feminine (e.g. penna, signora, scuola). Now the hard part: nouns ending in -e are in some cases masculine (e.g. amore, sole, signore) and in other cases feminine (e.g. automobile, stazione, carne). With these, it is best to learn the gender as you learn the new nouns. If you use note cards for vocabulary, try including a gender notation (m. or f.) for precisely these nouns, and test yourself regularly!

Now that you've had the basics on noun gender, here are a few crucial tips to cut down on your memorization time:

• Nouns ending in a consonant (e.g. -m, -t, -r) are imports from other languages and are masculine (e.g. film, sport, computer).
• Nouns ending in -zione or -sione are typically feminine (e.g. stazione, decisione, lezione).
• Some common nouns are actually abbreviations of longer ones (e.g. foto from fotografia). These abbreviated nouns carry the gender of their longer version (hence, la foto even though foto ends in an -o.)
• Many nouns ending in -ma (of Greek derivation) are masculine, despite the -a at the end (e.g. programma, tema, sistema). Be on the lookout for them!

You will discover many other exceptions to these gender rules as you learn more and more Italian. The best advice is to note these exceptions on your vocabulary cards, so that you may learn the gender together with the meaning of these tricky nouns.

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Plurals (I plurali)

Singular nouns can be made plural according to predictable rules. Check out this chart to understand these transformations:

singolare	plurale
ragazzo (m.)	ragazzi
penna (f.)	penne
dottore (m.)	dottori
automobile (f.)	automobili

As you can see, nouns ending in -o in the singular (which are generally masculine), end in -i in the plural, and nouns ending in -a in the singular (generally feminine), end in -e in the plural. Nouns ending in -e in the singular end in -i in the plural regardless of gender.

As usual, there are important exceptions:

• Abbreviated nouns, nouns ending in a consonant, nouns ending in i, and nouns ending in an accented vowel do not change their forms. For example:

  singular	plural
  foto	foto
  film	film
  crisi	crisi
  citta'	citta'

• Nouns that end in -ca and -ga insert an -h in the plural, in order to preserve the sound of the singular form. Most nouns that end in -co with a stress on the second-to-last syllable insert the same -h, as do most nouns ending in -go. For example:

  singular	plural
  banca	banche
  targa	targhe
  parco	parchi
  lago	laghi

  *However:

  singular	plural
  politico	politici

  Politico (politician) carries the stress on the third-to-last syllable, so it does not insert an -h in the plural; thus the sound changes.

You will soon come across a few nouns with very irregular plurals, for example:

singular	plural
uomo (man)	uomini (men)

You can't avoid using this noun, so add it and others with irregular plurals to your vocabulary flashcards!

Pratice Exercises