Five minute grammar lesson

Spending a few minutes on Italian grammar will help you avoid confusion and make everything much easier, we promise.

Italian Plurals

Here are the Italian grammar rules for plurals:

If a word is masculine, the article changes and the ending goes from -o to -i:

il pomodoro, i pomodori

If a word is feminine, the ending changes from -a to -e

la tiella, le tielle

If a masculine word begins with z, or an s followed by a consonant (the 'impure s'), it takes the article lo (plural gli, pronounced 'lyee').

lo stinco, gli stinchi

Italians are precise about singulars and plurals; it's just the way the language works. We anglophones couldn't imagine saying 'uno spaghetto', for just one strand of spaghetti.