UNIT ONE Nouns: gender and number Gender: masculine and feminine 1 All Italian nouns are either masculine or feminine. The best way to remem- ber the gender of a noun is to learn it along with its de fi nite article (i.e. the word meaning ‘the’). In this unit, nouns will therefore be given along with their de fi nite articles, but there will be no discussion of the articles as such. De fi nite and inde fi nite articles are the subject of Unit 2. Most nouns in the singular end in  -o ,  -a , or  -e . 2 Italian nouns ending in  -o  are usually masculine: 3 Italian nouns ending in  -a  are usually feminine: 4 Italian nouns ending in  -e  can be either masculine or feminine. Unless a noun ending in  -e  denotes a person whose gender is de fi ned (e.g. ‘husband’, ‘wife’), there are virtually no rules to determine its gender, which must there- fore be learned by heart or checked in a dictionary: l’uomo  [m] il fratello  [m] il pomeriggio  [m] il treno  [m] man brother afternoon train la donna  [f] la sorella  [f] la sera  [f] la bicicletta  [f] woman sister evening bicycle