italianopodcast

THE GENDER OF WORDS: MASCULINE AND FEMININE

IL GENERE DELLE PAROLE: MASCHILE E FEMMINILE

In Italian articles, nouns, pronouns and adjectives can be found in the masculine or
in the feminine form, singular and plural.

How to understand whether a word is masculine or feminine?

The general rule in the singular is that: words ending in –A are feminine and words
ending in –O are masculine.

For the plural: words ending in –I are masculine, whereas those ending in –E are
feminine.

For example TAVOLO (table) ends is O, so it’s masculine and singular, and STANZA
(room) ends in A, so it’s feminine singular.

The plural forms of TAVOLO and STANZA are TAVOLI and STANZE.

However, there are also many words like TELEVISIONE, or CANE, which end in E.

So, how is it possible to know their gender?

Unfortunately, with those words there is no rule that helps to know whether they are
masculine or feminine, so their gender must be learned by heart.

So, for example TELEVISIONE is feminine, we say in fact LA TELEVISIONE, and CANE is
masculine and we say IL CANE.

If we build a full sentence we will have:

La televisione è nuova
The television is new.

Il cane è malato
The dog is ill.

As you can see the adjective is masculine when the noun it refers to is masculine,
and feminine when the noun it refers to is feminine.

Sometimes we can also find exceptions, such as words ending in –O, which are
feminine, as the word ECO, or words ending in A which are masculine, as POETA.
Being exceptions, they require to be learned by heart.

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