untitled design (1)

Learn Italian online

A Curious Inconsistency

Don’t ask me why my odd little mind ended up considering this, but the fact remains that in Italian the word ‘giorno’ – day, is a ‘male’ word, whereas the word for week – ‘settimana’ is female.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand why this is the case.

Italian is one of those languages, that, unlike English, defines everything as being either male or female, from a grammatical point of view. Sometimes you can guess that a word will be either female or male, other times, as in the day/week thing, there appears to be no logical explanation or consistency.

think in italian logo dark bg 1

Stop reading, start speaking

Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.

Oh well, English has its notoriously devious spelling that bears little relation to pronunciation and Italian likes to catch you out with its odd male and female nouns.

No language is perfect. And before anyone points this out, I know that German nouns defy any reasonable explanation, especially with regard to the neuter gender that is assigned to some words.

Curious, very curious.

Most Popular

Supercilious Git

One of my commenters accused me of being pretentious, and she may have a point. But I wonder

Election images

It's easy to tell from all the, I have to say 'amateurish' looking, advertising hoardings popping up right,

Categories

Related Posts

On Teaching Lawyers

I’m running a course for a law firm at the moment, and the experience has led me to reminisce. I used to work with lawyers,

Pompeii

The ruins of Pompeii really have to be experienced to be believed. I have been there, and would love to return.