It is very hard to form and use the Italian noun and article by an English native speaker.

It is important to know that the neutral gender does not exist in Italian. Everything, every object, every animal, also every feeling or abstract concept is masculine or feminine.

So, for the masculine gender we will have sentences like:

Il giardino è bello (the garden is beautiful)

The definite article, the noun and the adjective are all masculine.

For the feminine, we can find sentences like:

La casa è nuova (the house is new)

The definite article, the noun and the adjective are declined in feminine gender.

We can state, generally speaking, that words ending in A are feminine, words ending in O are masculine and words ending in E can be either feminine or feminine.

La macchina (the car) is feminine.

Il libro (the book) is masculine.

La canzone (the song) is feminine.

L’animale (the animal) is masculine.

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We must change the last letter of the word to form the plural.

macchina – macchine

A – E

Libro – Libri

O – I

Canzone – canzoni

Animale – animali

E – I

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How do we use the definite article?

In English we use only the article THE, in Italian instead we have seven different articles:

IL, LO, LA,L’, I, GLI, LE

How to understand which one is correct?

We need to ask ourselves three questions:

1 – Is the noun masculine or feminine?

2 – Is it singular or plural?

3 – Does the following word begin with a vowel (open sound – A E I O U) or a consonant?

Let’s do some examples:

Macchina – feminine, singular, consonant – LA

Libro – masculine, singular, consonant– IL

Animale – masculine, singular, vowel – L’ (it is the short form of LO)

Amicizia – feminine, singular, vowel – L’ (it is the short form of (LA)

Studente – masculine, singular, consonant (It is a particular sound like Z, ST, SP) LO

Canzoni – feminine plural, consonant – LE

Libri – masculine, plural, consonant – I

Studenti – masculine, plural, consonant (It is a particular sound like Z, ST, SP) GLI

I hope you will enjoy the video in which I summarized this topic!

I am sure that practice will make you perfectly able to use the nouns and the definite articles in Italian.