singular masculine - brutto

singular feminine - brutta

plural masculine - brutti

plural feminine - brutte

sporco - dirty

singular masculine - sporco

singular feminine - sporca

plural masculine - sporchi

plural feminine - sporche

bianco - white

singular masculine - bianco

singular feminine - bianca

plural masculine - bianchi

plural feminine - bianche

nero - black

singular masculine - nero

singular feminine - nera

plural masculine - neri

plural feminine - nere

The above rules are good for any adjective that ends in an -o or -a. Adjectives like grande and verde, that end in -e, do not have separate masculine and feminine forms and make plural in -i. So, you would say la stanza e’ grande (the room is big), and il muro e’ grande (the wall is big), as well as le sedie sono grandi (the chairs are big). There are exceptions to this rule, but that will be addressed in another lesson.

Placement of adjectives

In Italian, adjectives generally (poetry is different !) go after the noun they are describing. For example, il telefono rosso (the red telephone), and le professoresse vecchie (the old (female) professors). If you want to say that something is something, then the sentence structure is the same as in English, using the correct forms of essere: il telefono è rosso (the telephone is red); le professoresse sono vecchie (the (female) professors are old).

Numbers 11-99

The numbers 11-16, like the numbers 1-10 in Lesson 1, have slightly irregular forms - however they follow some patterns, much like they do in English. 17-19 follow another pattern. Eleven is undici, which is actually a contraction (shortening) of uno e dieci, or 1 and 10. Seventeen is Diciassette, or 10 and 7, and so on. Much like the teens in English - fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, etc.

Twenty in Italian is venti. Twenty-one is ventuno (a contraction of venti e uno or twenty and one), 22 is ventidue (twenty and two), and so on. Thirty is trenta, 31 is trentuno, 38 is trentotto (thirty and 8). This pattern holds for all of the numbers 11 through 99 - first learn the base (such as venti (twenty), quaranta (forty), or ottanta (eighty)), then to make numbers in-between the bases, add the word for the second number onto the end (ventidue (twenty-two), quarantacinque (forty-five), ottantanove (eighty-nine)). If two vowels meet, the first one is dropped like in vent(i)uno (twenty-one). Isn’t that easy?

Examples

Here are some examples of sentences you can now make, using the words and grammar from these 2 lessons:

Sono di Milano

Tino è in cucina.

La signorina è carina.

Tu sei antipatico.

La sedia è comoda.

Milano è in Italia.

Il professore vecchio è malato.

Il telefono verde è sporco.

Il bagno è in casa.

La casa di Maria è arancione. (what a funny colour ?)

Here are the translations for these sentences.