Italian Nouns With Irregular Gender

In Italian, grammatical gender, when referring to people and animals, is related to sex. However, this principle is not always observed. Three distinct examples include: la guardia (guard—usually a man), il soprano (a woman), l'aquila (eagle—male or female).

Regarding things, the attribution of gender may seem unrelated with respect to meaning. For example, there is no logical reason for which il latte (milk) and il sale (salt) "should" be masculine (notably, in Venetian dialect both are feminine). To the contemporary Italian speaker the choice between masculine or feminine seems to be either totally arbitrary, or, in the case of derivative nouns, simply a matter of grammatical fact (e.g., nouns ending with the suffix -zione are feminine, while nouns ending with the suffix -mento are masculine).

For today's speaker, a historical explanation does not count; the contemporary perspective must remain distinct from the diachronic (which concerns the evolution of language). Italian nouns, for the most part, retain their gender from the Latin. Nouns originally neutral in Latin usually became masculine. There have been some changes, though: from the Latin word folia, the neuter plural of folium, in Italian became foglia (leaf), feminine singular (because in Italian the ending -a, in the majority of cases, is feminine and singular). The conformity to this rule is also illustrated in the assignment of gender to foreign words used in Italian.

That the assignment of gender is immaterial with respect to the inherent meaning of things is born out by a comparison between diverse languages, even though they are related to one another: Italian, French, and Spanish.

Masculine in Italian / Feminine in French

il dentela dent (tooth), il costumela coutume (costume), il fiorela fleur (flower), il marela mer (sea)

Feminine in Italian / Masculine in French

la coppiale couple (couple), la mescolanzale mélange (mixture), la sciabolale sabre (saber)

Masculine in Italian / Feminine in Spanish

il costumela costumbre (costume), il fiorela flor (flower), il lattela leche (milk), il mielela miel (honey), il salela sal (salt), il sanguela sangre (blood)

Feminine in Italian / Masculine in Spanish

la cometael cometa (comet), la domenicael domingo (Sunday), l'origineel origen (origin)

English is much easier, since grammatical gender is not recognized except in rare cases. Conversely, German, much like Latin, also has the neuter gender. There are significant differences between the Italian and German with regard to gender; for instance il sole (the Sun) is feminine (die Sonne), while la luna (the Moon) is masculine (der Mond).

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Filippo, Michael San. "Italian Nouns With Irregular Gender." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/italian-nouns-with-irregular-gender-2011446. Filippo, Michael San. (2023, April 5). Italian Nouns With Irregular Gender. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/italian-nouns-with-irregular-gender-2011446 Filippo, Michael San. "Italian Nouns With Irregular Gender." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/italian-nouns-with-irregular-gender-2011446 (accessed March 28, 2024).