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:
“How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which today we deem but fables?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“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)
“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)