Traditional Grammar 2

The Definite Article

In English the definite article is the word the. The corresponding words in Italian are il and la. il is used with masculine nouns and la is used with feminine nouns.

The definite article il is used with masculine nouns and la is used with feminine nouns.

	Italian	Gender	English
	il cane	masculine	the dog
	il gatto	masculine	the cat
	la casa	feminine	the house
	la mano	feminine	the hand

Special forms of the definite article

Just like the indefinite article, the definite article changes for phonetic reasons when it is followed by certain letters. The masculine form, il, becomes lo when it is followed by a vowel, by z or by the combination s + consonant; lo is then contracted to l’ when it is followed by a vowel. The feminine form, la, is contracted to l’ when it is followed by a vowel.

	Italian	Gender	English
	lo zio	masculine	the uncle
	lo specchio	masculine	the mirror
	l’albero	masculine	the tree
	l’autobus	masculine	the bus
	l’opinione	feminine	the opinion
	l’arancia	feminine	the orange

Note that these special forms follow a very similar pattern to those of the indefinite article, however the pattern is not identical. The masculine indefinite article un remains unchanged when it is followed by a vowel. In contrast the masculine definite article changes from il to lo and it is then further contracted to l’ when it is followed by a vowel.

In the next two exercises you’ll practise using the definite article with all the nouns you already know.

In the next two exercises you’ll learn some new nouns. Each noun will be accompanied by an article (indefinite or definite), so that you can learn the noun’s gender even if you can’t work it out from the ending. Be particularly attentive in the case of nouns that start with a vowel. In this case masculine nouns will use the indefinite article un while feminine nouns will use the contracted indefinite article un’. Both masculine and feminine nouns that start with a vowel use the same form of the definite article, l’, so it won’t be possible to work out the gender of these nouns just from the definite article. In the rare instances when we introduce a new noun that starts with a vowel and whose gender cannot be determined from its ending, we will be sure to provide some other context to allow you to work out its gender, such as showing you the noun together with the indefinite article.

Whenever we show you a new noun, we will always make sure you can deduce its gender, either from the noun’s ending or from the context in which it appears.

Next lesson: Traditional Grammar 3