nouns eg gatto and gatta

Ciao a Tutti,

Please help: with ALL nouns eg gatto and gatta--- is there a KEY to changing from masculine to feminine? Or do you have to remember both words for male cat and female cat? Any good cheat sheets out there? Grazie Million.

There's no fast track answer to this question as far as I'm aware.  It takes practice and understanding the exceptions, per this article: http://dontspeakitalian.com/italian-grammar-101-gender/

There are loads of web resources out there that will build understanding of grammar.  Not easy, but no aspect of language learning is.  It's part of the pleasure of languages.

Bouna fortuna

Chris

Hi Paul, 

thanks for your question! As perfectly explained by Chris, there's no fast track answer unfortunately.

Most Italian nouns ending in -o are masculine (e.g. ragazzo), while most Italian nouns ending in -a are feminine (e.g. ragazza). 

In some cases, changing the ending vowel will be enough (e.g. ragazzo/ragazza), in others you will be dealing with totally different words (e.g. uomo/donna).

Should the masculine noun end in –tore, the feminine form will (most likely) end in –trice (e.g. attore/attrice). Certain nouns describing males ending in –e, instead, have feminine forms ending
in –essa (e.g. dottore/dottoressa).

Hope this helps! :)