Italian Articles and Demonstratives
One of the biggest challenges for English speakers in learning Italian is the articles and demonstratives category. While in English one must master only a, an, the, this, that, these and those or seven of these little gems, in Italian this corresponds to 22 little words, which if you do not use correctly is sure to create confusion. Luckily, there is a method to the madness. In addition to needing to correspond to both gender and number they must also correspond to the beginAning letter(s) of masculine nouns. One huge difference between English and Italian is that there are many instances in Italian where contractions are not an option, but mandatory and this is a good primer. So here is your cheat sheet.
The first thing to remember is that with the masculine nouns the beginning letter or letters indicate which article to use, the more you pronounce the words the more you will understand why. The first grouping is the words that begin with a vowel (v) the second is words that begin in a consonant or s+vowel (s+v) and the third is words that begin with s+consonant, z, gn,pn,ps,x, i/y+vowel (s+c).
Articles-indeterminant (a,an)
| masculine singular | masculine plural | - | feminine singular | feminine plural |
| (v) un | degli | un’ | delle | |
| (s+v) un | dei | una | delle | |
| (s+c) uno | degli |
Articles-determinant (the)
| masculine singular | masculine plural | - | feminine singular | feminine plural |
| (v) l’ | gli | l’ | le | |
| (s+v) il | i | la | le | |
| (s+c) lo | gli |
Demonstrative-near (this, these)
| masculine singular | masculine plural | - | feminine singular | feminine plural |
| (v) quest’ | questi | quest’ | queste | |
| (s+v) questo | questi | questa | queste | |
| (s+c) questo | questi |
Demonstrative-far (that, those)
| masculine singular | masculine plural | - | feminine singular | feminine plural |
| (v) quell’ | quegli | quell’ | quelle | |
| (s+v) quel | quei | quella | quelle | |
| (s+c) quello | quegli |
*Note the apostrophes, they are important.
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