Basic Italian: A Grammar and Workbook

l’ is used before words beginning with a vowel or h; lo is used before words starting with z, gn, ps, s + consonant; il is used ...

Remember that, as we saw in Unit 1, paragraph 19, the masculine plural form can also denote a class of people in general, as wel ...

7 The masculine forms uno and un are used before masculine words: uno is used before words starting with z, gn, ps, s + consonan ...

9 It may be useful to compare the use of the definite and indefinite article in table form: Use of the articles 10 The use of th ...

11 In some cases a definite article is used in Italian where an indefinite article (or a possessive adjective – see Unit 3) is u ...

Exercise 1 Insert the definite article before the nouns. Examples: l’acqua; la stanza; le esperienze; il ristorante; lo zio; gli ...

Exercise 3 Insert the correct article in the blank spaces. Example: Maria ha una casa. (Maria has a house.) (^1) —— zio di Maria ...

UNIT THREE Adjectives; possessive and demonstrative pronouns 1 Adjectives in Italian must agree in gender and number with the no ...

4 Some adjectives end in -a, like the following: These adjectives have three forms: -a for the masculine and feminine singular ( ...

sound of c and g and add h (-chi, -ghi), or change the sound of c and g in the plural (-ci, -gi). The feminine plural forms alwa ...

9 The demonstrative adjectives questo (this) and quello (that), like their English counterparts, always precede the noun they re ...

11 The forms of the adjective buono (good), when used before a singular noun, change in the same way as the indefinite article: ...

Note that when santo means ‘holy’ or ‘blessed’, it is regular: il santo padre (the Holy Father), una santa donna (a holy woman). ...

16 The forms of the possessive pronouns (‘mine’, ‘yours’, etc.) are the same as those of the possessive adjectives, and are alwa ...

Demonstrative pronouns 18 Questo and quello are also used as demonstrative pronouns (this (one), that (one), these (ones), those ...

11 (quello) ragazzo (simpatico) ————— 12 (questo) esercizi (facile) ————— 13 (quello) (bello) specchi ————— 14 (questo) (bello) ...

Exercise 3 Complete the sentences by adding the correct form of the possessive adjective and, where necessary, the article. Exam ...

Exercise 5 Complete the sentences by choosing the right form of the adjectives and pronouns. Example: (Questo) non è (tuo) stanz ...

UNIT FOUR The present tense of essere and avere 1 Like their counterparts in many other languages, the Italian verbs essere (to ...

Subject pronouns 2 The Italian subject pronouns are: For the third person, the following pronouns can still be found in some tex ...