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Definite and Indefinite Articles

Italian Beginner Level - Lesson 3

Taking Notes

Italian definite articles generally correspond to the English article “the”, but while in English “the” has only one form, in Italian there is a total of 7 different definite articles: LO, IL, LA, L', GLI, I, LE.

In Italian there are four indefinite articles: un, uno, una and un'. Which one you need to choose depends on the gender of the noun it goes with, and the letter the noun starts with.

In Italian, all nouns (with a few exceptions) have articles before them. It's a general rule. Articles can be masculine or feminine, singular or plural.

Indefinite articles denote a noun but don't refer to a specific noun. In addition to these two types of articles, Italian further categorizes articles in a way that English doesn't: grammatical gender and number.