- Gender and form of Italian nouns and adjectives
Every Italian noun is either masculine or feminine in gender; there are no neuter nouns. If the thing referred to has biological gender, then the grammatical gender of the noun will generally be the same as the biological gender. But even nouns referring to inanimate objects have grammatical gender, and there is generally no “logical” reason to account for such a noun’s being of one gender rather than the other. That is simply a fact of the language.
- Most nouns that end in –oin the singular are masculine. Their plural ends in –i (momento, momenti).
- Most nouns that end in –ain the singular are feminine. Their plural ends in –e (rosa, rose).
- There are some nouns which end in –ein the singular; some of these are masculine while others are feminine: padre (“father”), madre(“mother”). Their plural ends in –i (padri, madri).
In Italian every adjective agrees in gender and in number with the noun it modifies. Some adjectives have four distinctive forms (with endings like those of the nouns in groups 1 and 2, above):
un ragazzo italiano due (2) ragazzi italiani
una ragazza italiana due ragazze italiane
Other adjectives have only two distinctive forms, one singular and one plural:
un ragazzo OR una ragazza → francese
due ragazzi OR due ragazze → francesi
Adjectives will normally be listed under their masculine singular forms (in the remainder of this book and elsewhere).