As said before the article in Italian can be masculine, feminine, singular and plural.

In this article we will focus on the indefinite article and we will see some common exceptions that affect the noun.

In English there are only two indefinite singular articles: a, an.

In Italian we have: UN, UNO, UNA, UN’

Some examples are:

un cane è in giardino – a dog is in the garden – masculine

un amico è insieme a noi – a friend is with us – masculine

uno stivale è rotto – a boot is broken – masculine

una casa è bianca – a house is white – feminine un’amica è andata via – a friend has gone away – feminine

We can use UN for masculine nouns either with consonant or vowel.

We must use UNO before sounds like: SP, ST, SC or Z or GN.

We use UNA before feminine nouns beginning with a consonant and

We use UN’ before feminine nouns beginning with a vowel.

plural

The partitive article DEI, DEGLI, DELLE is used to form the plural.

This article is formed using the preposition DI (meaning OF) and the definite articles I, GLI, LE.

Sometimes we use ALCUNI, ALCUNE. They are indefinite adjective meaning SOME.

We can transform the previous examples using the plural form.

Dei cani sono in giardino – masculine plural

degli amici sono insieme a noi– masculine plural

degli stivali sono rotti– masculine plural

delle case sono bianche – feminine plural

delle amiche sono andate via – feminine plural

Nouns general rules

The formation of the noun in Italian follows some general rules:

A for feminine nouns

La casa – le case

O for masculine nouns

Il giardino – i giardini

E for masculine and feminine

Il piede – i piedi

La chiave – le chiavi

main exceptions

But we have many exceptions, the most common are the following:

Masculine words ending in A – il problema, il tema, il cinema, il papà

Feminine words ending in O – la mano, la radio, la moto, la metro

Or

Words that change completely from masculine to feminine:

il padre/la madre il fratello/la sorella il marito/la moglie l’uomo/la donna

or

words that do not change like

cantante –il/un cantante –  la/una cantante – una cantante – feminine

or studente –   lo/uno studente –  la/una studente (it is common to hear also – una studentessa)

other two common nouns that behave in the same way are:

collega – colleague – il collega/la collega

and

parente – relative – il parente/la parente

In this article we have seen the most common features of the indefinite article and the most usual exceptions of the nouns.

Here there are some exercises. I hope you will find them useful to practice what you have learnt until now. Buon lavoro!

exercises