COMMON NOUNS

• nouns ending in -o are masculine, made plural by changing -o to -i
• nouns ending in -a are feminine, made plural by changing -a to -e
• nouns ending in -e are either masculine or feminine, made plural by changing the -e to -i no matter what their gender is
• most nouns ending in -ione (especially in -zione and -sione) are feminine, those ending in -one are all masculine

GENDER PATTERNS

SPELLING ADJUSTMENTS IN THE PLURAL

MASS NOUNS

• two types of common nouns: count and mass
  • count nouns refer to persons, things, etc., that can be counted; they have both singular and plural forms
  • mass nouns refer instead to things that cannot be counted, and therefore generally have only a singular form (l'acqua, la fame, la sete, lo zucchero)

PROPER NOUNS AND TITLES

MORE GENDER PATTERNS

• nouns ending in -ista refer to both male and female persons, and are thus both masculine and feminine. many of these nouns are used to indicate occupations, professions, etc.
• some masculine nouns, generally ending in -e, correspond to feminine nouns ending in -essa (dottore/dottoressa)

NOUNS OF GREEK ORIGIN

• some Italian nouns are of greek origin. some end in -ema and -amma, which correspond to english nouns ending in -em and -am. they are all masculine. as masculine nouns, the final -a changes to -i in the plural.
• nouns ending in -si in the singular are also of greek origin. they correspond to english nouns ending in -sis. they are all feminine. the singular -si ending for all these words is not changed in the plural.

OTHER TYPES OF NOUNS

ALTERED NOUNS

COMPOUND NOUNS