28 ITALIAN GRAMMAR
2. la sedia, le sedie, the chair, the chairs
Paltra ssdia, ie altre sedie the other chair, the other chairs
Pentrata, 1'entrate the entrance, the entrances
La and its plural, le, are the feminine forms of the definite
article. La becomes P before any of the vowels, le becomes
P only before e.
3* la penna e 1'inchiostro, the pen and ink
.The definite article must be repeated before each noun to
which it refers.
28. Plural of Nouns. From the examples given above it
can be seen that nouns ending in -o form their plural by
changing that o to i and that feminine nouns ending in -a
form their plural by changing that a to e.
29, Adjectives in -a* The examples above (altro, altri
— altra, altre) show also that:
1. Italian adjectives vary in gender and number, in
agreement with their nouns.
2. Adjectives ending in-o have four forms:
MASCULINE FEMININE
Singular -o -*
PlviraL -i -e
EXERCISE I?
cosa fojirtg questo this
lettura reading stesso same
Hbro di lettura reader studioso studious
maestro,-a teacher
chiudere to close
americano American cominciare to begin, start
attire active imparare a memoria memoriae
molto much (pi. many) premiere to take
Haw new hanno they have
piccolo little, small
i l»vero poor molto adv. very