Yearlyglot

Now that we understand noun gender and articles, the next thing to explore is possession, and the adjectives used to describe it. Fortunately, in Italian, possession is only described by way of possessive adjectives (similar to English). Unlike languages with noun declension (eg, German, Russian, Polish), I don’t have to worry about learning genetive cases and endings. Your mileage may vary.

What are articles? I’m not talking about the things you read in a newspaper or a magazine, I’m talking about those little words that are attached to every noun you use: “a/an”, and “the”. Articles serve the purpose of distinguish a general noun (one of possibly many) from a specific noun. They tell the difference between “a ball” and “the ball”.

Like all romance languages, Italian has two genders: masculine and feminine, and these genders are reflected in both singular and plural forms. So this means that every noun is either masculine or feminine; either he or she. In other words, there is no “it”.