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Italian Tutorial |  online menu |
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The following Italian tutorial was written by a soon to be graduate student in linguistics named Jennifer Wagner, who runs a fantastic website called Indo-European Languages - ielanguages.com. We thank her for generously allowing us to post her work here! |
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19. Italian Formation of Plural Nouns
If a word is masculine singular, change the last letter to an i. If a word is feminine singular, change the last letter to an e if it ends in a, or if it ends in e, change it to an i.
| Masculine | |
|---|---|
| -o | -i |
| -a | -i |
| -e | -i |
| Feminine | |
| -a | -e |
| -e | -i |
Note: Some nouns ending in -co and -go may or may not insert an h before changing the o to i. There is no gerneral rule for it. All nouns ending in -ca and -ga insert an h before changing the a to e. Nouns ending in an accented vowel do not change for the plural. (la città (city) becomes le città) There are some masculine nouns that end -a, and these nouns change the -a to -i in the plural: il programma, il poeta, il pianete, il pilota, il poema, il sistema. The plural of l'uomo (man) is gli uomini, while the plural of la mano (hand) is le mani.
