Sunday, September 16, 2018

Irregular Italian Plurals

Italian plurals are different from those of French, Spanish and Portuguese. The regular plural ending is not s. Most masculine nouns end in -i and most feminine nouns end in -e.

Here are regular plurals in Italian:

il ragazzo i ragazzi (the boy/the boys)
la ragazza le ragazze (the girl/the girls)

il libro/i libri (the book/the books)
la casa/le case (the house/the houses)

A number of Italian plurals are irregular. Here are examples:

il braccio/le braccia (the arm/the arms)
la città/le città (the city/the cities)
il dito/le dita (the finger/the fingers)
il labbro/le labbra (the lip/the lips)
la mano/le mani (the hand/the hands)
la moto/le moto (the motorcycle/the motorcycles)
la radio/le radio (the radio/the radios)
l'università/le università (the university/the universities)
l'uomo/gli uomini (the man/the men)
l'uovo/le uova (the egg/the eggs)

Certain nouns such as braccio (arm) are masculine in the singular but feminine in the plural. Nouns such as moto (motorcycle) are invariable in singular and plural. The plural of uomo (man) has an extra syllable in the plural. From the examples it is evident that Italian has a number of irregular plurals.


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