Articoli determinativi e indeterminativi

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2–3 minuti

Ciao! 👋

Today I’d like to talk about something fundamental to stop getting determinative and indeterminative articles wrong. For many beginning students it may seem difficult to handle, but it is actually one of the few Italian rules with no exceptions.😜
Let’s get started!

Articoli determinativi

The determinative article precedes the noun or adjective and indicates something or someone well defined. It is never used:

❍ with cities (except L’Aquila, La Spezia, Il Cairo, La Mecca and L’Avana)

❍ with proper names of persons

❍ with titles referring to person in direct dialogue:

The feminine singular determinative article has two forms:

❍ if the following word begins with a vowel:

❍ if the following word begins with a consonant:

The plural feminine is always :

The masculine singular has three forms:
❍ if the following word begins with a vowel (like the feminine):

❍ If the following word begins with s+consonant, z, x, y, ps, pn, gn:

❍ If the following word begins with the other consonants:

The masculine plural has two forms:
❍ If the following word begins with s+consonant, z, x, y, ps, pn, gn:

❍ in all other cases:

Articoli indeterminativi

The indefinite articlee precedes the noun or adjective and indicates something or someone undefined.
Thus, has only the singular form; for the plural, is used the partitive article .

The feminine singular has two forms:

❍ whether the following word begins with a vowel (it has an apostrophe to distinguish it from the masculine form that we will see in a moment):