Articles
| Gender | Number | Article | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Singular | il/lo | Lo before s + consonant, z, gn, ps, pn, x, y and consonant clusters (disregarding sonorants), l' before a vowel, otherwise il. Note lo iodio ("the iodine"), lo Ionio (the Ionian Sea) where the initial i represents a semiconsonant; on the other hand, it is usual to employ l' before semiconsonantic u (pronounced /w/) in mobile diphthongs: l'uomo "the man", l'uovo "the egg" . However, foreign words beginning with w and used in Italian, like West (referring to the American Old West) and whisky, are usually perceived as beginning with a v sound, and the il article is used: il West, il whisky, and Giacomo Puccini's opera is La fanciulla del West. |
| Plural | i/gli | gli (pronounced /ʎi/) before a vowel or z, sc, gn and consonant clusters (disregarding sonorants) | |
| Feminine | Singular | la | l' before a vowel: but la iarda ("the yard") for the same reason as before |
| Plural | le | l' is used rarely before a vowel |
| Gender | Morpheme | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Masculine | un | uno before z, sc, gn and consonant clusters (disregarding sonorants) |
| Feminine | una | un' before a vowel |
The forms l' and un' arise from mandatory elision of lo, la and una before vowels.
The plural of il dio ("the god") features an irregular definite article, being gli dei instead of *i dei.
Read more about this topic: Italian Grammar
Famous quotes containing the word articles:
“A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size—take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“It was not sufficient for the disquiet of our minds that we disputed at the end of seventeen hundred years upon the articles of our own religion, but we must likewise introduce into our quarrels those of the Chinese. This dispute, however, was not productive of any great disturbances, but it served more than any other to characterize that busy, contentious, and jarring spirit which prevails in our climates.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to “dress up like daddy.””
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)