Language/Italian/Grammar/Articles

DEFINITIVE AND UNDEFINITIVE ARTICLES IN ITALIAN

WHAT'S AN ARTICLE

If you come from a language which does not use articles, these elements could be quite difficult to understand.

An article is a word that marks a noun, giving the listener or the reader an important information about how specific or known this noun is, or, on the other hand, how general or unknown this noun is.

In fact, there are two main kinds of them: the definitive articles, usually used to mark specific and known things, and the indefinitive articles, usually used to mark general and unknown things. A third kind of articles is also used to mark a part or a certain amount of a thing, that is to say the partitive articles.

Articles are a variable part of the sentence and must be inflected according to gender and number.

However, not every noun should always be marked with an article: sometimes it must not be used. When, though?

Let us see.

DEFINITIVE ARTICLES

Definitive articles are called "Articoli determinativi" in Italian and are the most variable ones. They come from demonstrative Latin adjectives like "this" or "these" and have the purpose to mark specific and well known things. In fact a noun is usually preceded by a definitive article:

• when we mean a precise speciment of a concept/noun
• when we mean something we've already desbribed before
• when the thing we are talking about is already well known by the listener
• when the listener or the reader is already able to visualize in his or her head the precise thing we are talking about

For example: if I say "MELA" (meaning "apple") any of us will get a picture of an apple in its mind: but how is it? Big or small? Green or red? Can I give a context to this apple in some way? I will never be sure.

Saying "LA MELA" (where "LA" is an article and means "THE") means giving "a context" to "apple" which has to be obvious to the listener or the reader: in this case we have a precise image of "the" apple we are talking about, or we know the context in which this "apple" is considered. One of the most important role of a definitive article is to bring the listener or the reader to think of a specific and contextualized concept, and not "one of the many possible specifiment of that concept".

Definitve articles are also used to mark the gender of a word and should always be used when learning a new word, not to forget its gender. In fact there are two genders for nouns in Italian and the same two genders for articles: a masculine noun needs a masculine article and a feminine noun needs a feminine article.

Plus, articles also mark the number of a noun, singular or plural: a singular noun needs a singular article, a plural noun needs a plural article.

So, if we could put all this information inside a table it will be like this:

DEFINITIVE ARTICLES
		NUMBER
		Singular	Plural
GENDER	Masculine	IL, LO	I, GLI
	Feminine	LA	LE

--work in progess--