Traditional Grammar 1

Grammatical Terms

In this course we will try to limit the number of formal grammatical terms that we use. However our aim is to present a thorough introduction to Italian grammar, which requires the use of at least a basic set of grammatical terminology. Anyone who has studied English grammar at school or who has studied any foreign language in a formal setting will probably have no trouble with the grammatical terms that we use in this course, but for everyone else we will present a series of simple lessons covering basic English grammar to get you up to speed. You’ll find a link to one of these English grammar lessons at the beginning of any Italian lesson that introduces new grammatical terms for the first time. Here is the first such lesson.

• English Grammar 1

Masculine and Feminine Nouns

All nouns in Italian have a gender: either masculine or feminine. The gender of a noun affects how it is used in a sentence. Whenever you learn a new noun it is important to learn its gender as well, otherwise it will be virtually impossible to use the noun correctly.

Here are the ten words that you learnt in First Words, all of them nouns, along with their genders.

	Italian	Gender	English
	gatto	masculine	cat
	cane	masculine	dog
	casa	feminine	house
	albero	masculine	tree
	mano	feminine	hand
	libro	masculine	book
	chiave	feminine	key
	autobus	masculine	bus
	borsa	feminine	bag
	spazzola	feminine	brush

There are several rules that allow you to predict the gender of a noun, however the single most important rule is this: Nouns that end in -o are generally masculine and nouns that end in -a are generally feminine.

Nouns that end in -o are generally masculine and nouns that end in -a are generally feminine.

This rule covers around two thirds of the nouns you will encounter (most of the others end in a letter other than o or a). In fact, as you will see in later lessons, this rule will often apply to other words besides nouns. The -o and -a endings are the characteristic masculine and feminine endings in Italian and this will be evident in many grammatical topics. From the above list you can see that the words gatto, casa, albero, libro, borsa and spazzola all obey this rule. The only exception in this list is the word mano, which is actually feminine.

For some nouns, however, there is no way to predict their gender. In these cases you simply need to learn the gender of the noun when you learn the noun itself. This is the case for the words cane, chiave and autobus in the previous list, as well as for the word mano which is an exception to the previous rule.

In the first exercise in this lesson you’ll learn the genders of the ten nouns that you learnt in the last lesson. You might find as you proceed through this exercise that this task of learning genders is a bit tedious. Don’t worry too much about it - in future exercises we’ll use different techniques that make learning the genders of nouns easier and more natural. For now, just bear with us and complete the exercise.

The Indefinite Article

In English the indefinite articles are the words a and an. The corresponding words in Italian are un and una. un is used with masculine nouns and una is used with feminine nouns.

The indefinite article un is used with masculine nouns and una is used with feminine nouns.

Here are some examples using the indefinite article with some of the nouns you have already learnt.

	Italian	Gender	English
	un cane	masculine	a dog
	un albero	masculine	a tree
	una casa	feminine	a house
	una mano	feminine	a hand

This is the first of many situations you will encounter where you need to know the gender of a noun in order to use it correctly with other words.

In exercise 1.2 you’ll practise using the correct indefinite article with the nouns that you know. You’ve already learnt the genders of these nouns, so it should be easy for you to select the correct article - un for masculine nouns and una for feminine nouns.

Special forms of the indefinite article

The indefinite article changes for phonetic reasons when it is followed by certain letters. The masculine version, un, becomes uno when it is followed by a z or by the combination s + consonant.

	Italian	Gender	English
	uno zio	masculine	an uncle
	uno specchio	masculine	a mirror

The feminine version, una, is contracted to un’ when it is followed by a vowel.

	Italian	Gender	English
	un’opinione	feminine	an opinion
	un’arancia	feminine	an orange

The next exercise will include the words from the examples above, as well as several other new words. Rather than list the words here, we’ll leave you to discover them in the exercise. From now on, most of the new words you encounter will appear for the first time in the exercises; we’ll only discuss new words in the main text of a lesson if there is a particular reason to do so, for instance to clarify a peculiar usage that might not be very intuitive.

Now for the corresponding speaking exercise. Note that in this exercise you will be expected to select the correct indefinite article for each of the new nouns you have learnt. By learning the correct article you will automatically be learning the correct gender of each noun as well, since the indefinite article is different for masculine and feminine nouns. Take particular care with nouns that start with a vowel, however. In this case masculine nouns will take the ordinary masculine article un and feminine nouns will take the contracted feminine article un’. Both these articles are pronounced the same way, so it will be easy to confuse the two. Be alert for the subtle difference in the way the two articles are written and always think to yourself masculine or feminine, as appropriate, whenever you encounter these nouns. Here are two examples that demonstrate this difference:

	Italian	Gender	English
	un’opinione	feminine	an opinion
	un animale	masculine	an animal

And here is the exercise.

You might have noticed that exercise 1.4 included all the phrases from exercise 1.2 as well. This will be a recurring theme in many of the exercises. Whenever it’s appropriate we will mix old exercises and new exercises together so that you can continually review the old material without having to go back and redo the old exercises. The exercise system will automatically strike a good balance between learning new material and reviewing old material within each exercise. You can also affect this balance by simply spending more time on each exercise or by repeating recent exercises at the beginning of each new study session.

Next Lesson: Traditional Grammar 2