Easy Learning Italian Grammar (2011)

ARTICLES

What is an article?

In English, an article is one of the words the, a and an which go with nouns: the sun, a happy boy, an orange.

Two types of article

There are two types of article: the definite article and the indefinite article.

The definite article is the. You use it to refer to a specified thing or person.

I’m going to the supermarket.
That’s the woman I was talking to.

The indefinite article is a or an. You use it if you are not referring to any particular thing or person.

Is there a supermarket near here?
She was talking to a little girl.

The definite article

1. The basics

There are three questions you need to ask yourself to decide which definite article to use in Italian:

Is the noun masculine or feminine? (This is known as its gender)

Is it singular or plural?

Does the following word begin with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) or with another letter?

For more information on Nouns, see page 1.