Let’s Count in Italiano

Learn how to talk about your family members in Italian

Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash

ITALIAN FROM SCRATCH #5

Welcome back to Italian from Scratch, your free guide to learning the beautiful Italian language in a fun and easy way.

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Today we are going to have a tiny lesson about numbers in Italian, we will learn together the numbers and put them in sentences with all the information we know so far in the previous 4 lessons.

Let’s go!

THE NUMBERS = I NUMERI

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Now let’s build upon the previous lesson we had when we started to talk about our families.

When you want to say “I have a brother,” how can you do so?

First, we need to learn the verb (to have) in Italiano, which is (Avere). If you want to say (I have), it would be simply (Io ho).

Avere is an irregular verb so you will notice that it is very different when it is conjugated with any subject.

As we agreed before, the verb conjugation in Italian can indicate the subject, so you will rarely hear an Italian putting a subject in a sentence, so if you want to say “I have” you can just say (Ho). See how beautiful Italian is?

Now back to the numbers. In English, if you want to tell someone that you have one brother/sister, you can either say:

I have a brother, or I have one brother. However, in Italian, only the first one is used. Only the indefinite article is used and not the number.

Ho un fratello (Correct) — Ho uno fratello (Wrong)

Ho una sorella (Correct) — Ho uno sorella (Wrong)

That’s the only point you need to know for now regarding talking about individual members, the same goes for anything you want to talk about.

Needless to say, every rule in Italian has its exceptions, but we are not at the stage now to learn these exceptions. We are only learning basic rules, and the exceptions will come later.

The Plural

How can you form the plural in Italian? Again, this is a big argument, but for now, just know this:

For any masculine word ending in O, the plural will end in I:

Fratello (Brother) — Fratelli (Brothers)

Figlio (Son) — Figli (Sons)

For any feminine word ending in A, the plural will end in E:

Sorella (Sister) — Sorelle

Figlia (Daughter) — Figlie (Daughters)

So the general rule you should know for now is this:

Masculine nouns in Italian end in (O) and the plural ends in (I).

Feminine nouns in Italian end in (A) and the plural ends in (E).

Practice

Now, I will use all the information we used so far in these 5 lessons to introduce myself to you in Italian:

Ciao, mi chiamo Ahmed. Sono egiziano e vivo al Cairo. Ho un fratello e quattro sorelle. Mio fratello si chiama Amr. Piacere di conoscerti.

Hello, I am Ahmed. I am Egyptian and I live in Cairo. I have one brother and 4 sisters. Nice to meet you.

Can you do the same?