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The gender of the noun
Masculine or feminine: how to recognise gender from the ending, with exceptions and agreement.
First page · recognising gender
Masculine or feminine
: In Italian every noun has a grammatical gender: it is either masculine or feminine. There is no neuter. Knowing the gender is essential, because all the words that go with the noun (article, adjective) must have the same gender.
Persone e animali
When the noun indicates a person or an animal, the grammatical gender almost always follows the real sex: uomo, padre, cane are masculine; donna, madre, gatta are feminine.
uomo · donnapadre · madregallo · gallinacane · cagna
Cose e idee
When the noun indicates a thing, an idea or a quality, gender is only a grammatical category, with no link to sex: il tavolo is masculine, la sedia is feminine, but neither has a sex. In these cases the gender must be learned by heart.
il tavolo (m)la sedia (f)il coraggio (m)la libertà (f)
Come riconoscere il genere
To guess the gender you can look at the ending, i.e. how the noun ends. It is not a 100% reliable rule: in doubtful cases it is better to check the dictionary or learn the noun with its article.
| Esempi | Eccezioni | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Desinenza | Genere | Esempi | Eccezioni |
| -o | quasi sempre maschile | il libro, il tavolo, l'albero, il gioco | la mano, la radio, la foto, la moto, l'auto |
| -a | generalmente femminile | la scuola, la penna, la pasta, l'acqua | il problema, il clima, il papa, il poeta, il pilota |
| -à | generalmente femminile | la città, la libertà, la metà | il papà |
| -e | maschile o femminile | il sole, il pane (m) · la luce, la carne (f) | controlla sul dizionario |
| -i | maschile o femminile | il lunedì, lo sci (m) · l'analisi, l'oasi (f) | — |
| -ù | generalmente femminile | la gioventù, la virtù, la servitù | il caucciù |
For agreement, the article and the adjective must have the same gender as the noun: una donna simpatica (all feminine), un ragazzo simpatico (all masculine). Getting the noun's gender wrong makes the whole sentence wrong.
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