Italian Indefinite Article - Lawless Italian Grammar


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Articolo indefinito

The aptly named indefinite article indicates an unspecific or unidentified noun.

Per esempio…

Vedo una gatta e un cane.		I see a cat and a dog.
Ha un’idea.		He has an idea.

Characteristics of indefinite articles

Used with countable nouns (as opposed to uncountable nouns like money and water)
Placed directly in front of a noun or an adjective + noun
Agree with the noun in gender and number

Italian indefinite articles

	Masculine	Feminine
a, an, one	un, uno	una, un’
some	dei, degli	delle

+ There are two singular articles for each gender, each of which can mean a, an, or one:

Masculine

Un is the normal masculine singular indefinite article.

It changes to uno in front of a noun beginning with a complex sound.

Feminine

Una is the normal feminine singular indefinite article.

It contracts to un’ in front of a vowel.

Note that all of the above rules also apply to the number "one."

+ There are three plural indefinite articles, all equivalent to "some":

1.	Masculine plural of un:	dei
2.	Masculine plural of uno:	degli
3.	Feminine plural:	delle

Many Italian grammars say that there is no plural indefinite article, or that you just use the partitive when you need a plural. While the plural forms of the indefinite and partitive articles are indeed identical, there is a difference between them – see Partitive articles.

The Italian indefinite article is not always used when talking about a person’s profession with essere (to be).

Per esempio…