A proposito del neutro

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Nouns that name things, places, ideas, etc.

Unlike English, Italian assigns gender to all nouns: nouns are either masculine or feminine, and never neuter. This means that, in addition, to the natural gender (ragazzo ‘boy’, ragazza ‘girl’), Italian has a grammatical gender for all nouns. For example, nouns such as libro ‘book’, quadro ‘painting’, are masculine by convention and nouns such as sedia ‘chair’ and palla ‘ball’ are feminine for the same reason.

• Nouns ending in -o are usually masculine, in -a are usually feminine.
• Nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine. Are for sure feminine nouns ending in:
  • –zione, –sione, –gione such as stazione (‘station’), occasione (‘occasion’), and regione (‘region’)
  • -tudine such as abitudine (‘habit’), gratitudine (‘gratitude’), and moltitudine (‘multitude’)
• Some Italian nouns are stressed on the last vowel and carry an accent mark:
  • nouns ending in -ò are masculine as falò (‘bonfire’), casinò (‘casino’)
  • nouns ending in -à such as città (‘city’), università (‘univerisity’), età (‘age’) are feminine; but papà (‘dad’) is masculine
  • nouns ending in -è such as caffè (‘coffee’), bebè (‘baby’) are masculine
  • nouns ending in -ì such as lunedì (‘Monday’), martedì (‘Tuesday’) are masculine; but pipì (‘pee’) is feminine
  • nouns ending in -ù such as gioventù (‘youth’), virtù (‘virtue’) are feminine; but tabù (‘taboo’), and tiramisù (‘tiramisu’) are masculine
• Although most nouns ending in -a are feminine, it is not too rare to find masculine nouns in -a, as in nouns of a Greek origin ending in -ma and -ta such as clima (‘climate’), problema (‘problem’) and pianeta (‘planet’)
• Abbreviated nouns retain the gender of the words from which they are derived: foto f. (from fotografia), moto f. (from motocicletta), auto f. (from automobile), bici f. (from bicicletta), cinema m. (from cinematografo)
• Foreign nouns integrated into Italian vocabulary (bar, computer, mouse, hamburger, film, sport etc.) are usually all masculine

Questo

Questo/questa (this) is a demonstrative adjective and follows the adjective rules, but always precedes the noun it modifies: questo divano (this couch), questa sedia (this chair). When used alone, it functions as a pronoun and agrees with the noun it refers to. It can be sometimes used as the equivalent of ‘it‘ (neuter subject) to refer to things (or wild animals) even if  Italian generally just let the verb stand alone: Questo è un divano = È un divano (This/It is a couch),  Questa è una finestra =  È una finestra (This/It is a window).

• Repeat one by one the eleven audio files and use speech to text to check if the computer recognizes your pronunciation
• Choose one object and one animal. Describe them using at least two adjectives. Use the dictionary if you need to find more Italian adjectives. Then check if there are mistakes in your text with Spell and Grammar Checker.