Nessuna / Nessuno

rigoletto

rigoletto

Buon giorno :-)

Is the only difference between Nessuna & Nessuno one is m and the other f, or do they also mean something different.

I realised in some of the tests one would mean nobody the other is none of us. Are they exactly the same meaning?
Lucia - Rocket Languages Tutor

Lucia - Rocket Languages Tutor

Buon pomeriggio, rigoletto :)

Nessuno and nessuna are indeed the masculine and feminine forms for the same word, so they mean the same thing.
None of us is usually translated as nessuno di noi (literally, none of us!), but the simple nessuno is fine anyway as the "of us" part can be implied by the context.

What are the specific texts you mentioned?
rigoletto

rigoletto

Grazie tante Lucia :) 

More specifically these are the ones i am referring to:


Nessuno vuole vedere Roberto.
Nobody wants to see Roberto.
 
Nessuna di noi vuole andare a scuola!
None of us wants to go to school!

If i am correct, you base the gender of the Noun at the beginning on the object? Or the people , or both? So because Roberto is a male, you would try construct the whole sentence belonging to it's subject the gender, this is obvious to me.

However, I am curious what if the group, that did not want to go to school, were all male (or potential) students, would you still be able to use Nessuna or must you revert to the gender most applicable to the people being of male gender, or is it still based on the object (scuola) ?

 
Lucia - Rocket Languages Tutor

Lucia - Rocket Languages Tutor

In these sentences the gender is not based on the object, but on the subject (the people).

Nessuno vuole vedere Roberto.
Since Italian has only two genders, when talking about a general group of people the masculine form is used (some languages have a neuter form, but this is not the case for Italian). This nessuno refers to everyone in a certain group of people, or humanity in general. If, say, the object were a female human being, Roberta, you would still use nessuno because the gender is subject-dependent: Nessuno vuole vedere Roberta.

Now for your second sentence. Nessuna di noi vuole andare a scuola!
Nessuna is a bit more specific in this case, because it tells the reader that the subjects (the people who don't want to go to school) are all girls. Be it 2, 3, 10 girls, you would always use nessuna.
But: If in this group you add 1 boy, 1 boy only, then the rules change and you must use nessuno. When the subject is a mixed group, no matter the ratio between males and females, the masculine form is always preferred!
The object (Roberto, scuola) has nothing to do with the gender you have to choose because nessuno/a acts here as a subject. When nessuno/a is used as an adjective, that's the case where it's object-dependent. To summarize:
- male group > nessuno
- female group > nessuna
- mixed group > nessuno

Hope this helps!

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