Noun Gender & Plural Formation

📌 Nota grammaticale

In Italian, most nouns ending in -o are masculine. To make them plural, change the final -o to -i. This is the most common pattern for masculine nouns in Italian.

📌 Nota grammaticale

To form the plural of a standard masculine noun ending in -o, replace the final -o with -i. For example, 'il libro' becomes 'i libri'.

📌 Nota grammaticale

Most nouns ending in -a are feminine. They take the feminine singular article 'la'. In the plural, the final -a changes to -e, and the article 'la' becomes 'le'.

📌 Nota grammaticale

Feminine nouns ending in -a change to -e in the plural. The singular article 'la' also changes to the plural feminine article 'le'.

📌 Nota grammaticale

Nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine; you must memorize the gender with each word. Regardless of their gender, ALL nouns ending in -e change to -i in the plural.

📌 Nota grammaticale

Whether a noun ending in -e is masculine or feminine, its plural form always ends in -i. The article changes accordingly: masculine 'il/lo' becomes 'i/gli', and feminine 'la' becomes 'le'.

📌 Nota grammaticale

Nouns ending in -ista (like 'turista' or 'pianista') refer to people. They have the same form for singular masculine and feminine, but the article changes (il/la), and the plural changes based on gender (-isti for masculine, -iste for feminine).

📌 Nota grammaticale

Nouns that end with an accented vowel (like l'università or il caffè) or abbreviated nouns (like la foto, l'auto) do not change their form in the plural. Only the article changes to show the plural.

📌 Nota grammaticale

For nouns ending in -ista, the masculine plural ends in -i (becoming -isti) with the article 'i', while the feminine plural ends in -e (becoming -iste) with the article 'le'.

📌 Nota grammaticale

Many common everyday nouns are clipped forms of longer words (e.g., la moto from motocicletta, la bici from bicicletta). Because they end in a vowel that isn't their original ending, they are invariable in the plural.

📌 Nota grammaticale

Nouns ending in -ore (like il professore, il dottore) are almost always masculine. In the plural, they follow the standard rule for -e nouns and change to -i (i professori).

📌 Nota grammaticale

A small group of high-frequency words of Greek origin end in -a but are masculine (e.g., il problema, il cinema, il tema, il sistema). They take masculine articles and adjectives, and their plural ends in -i.