Insieme in italiano by Giulia Po DeLisle, Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Fabiana Viglione, Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
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Di dove sei tu? Io sono italiana
Di dov’è Lei? Io sono italiano.
Di dove siete voi? Noi siamo italiani.
Di dove sono le professoresse?
Loro sono italiane.
| Io | I |
| Tu | You |
| Lui/Lei | He/She |
| Lei (formal) | You (formal) |
| Noi | We |
| Voi | You (plural) |
| Loro | They |
In Italian all things – people, animals, objects, places and concepts are marked grammatically as either feminine or masculine. Adjectives have to agree in gender with the things they describe. These grammatical constructs impact the ways Italians talk about gender identities, and make non-binary solutions more difficult to achieve than in English. Some examples:
➤ There is no equivalent to the non-binary use of they/them/their that we now have in English. At present, there are no non-binary pronouns in Italian.
➤ Some people choose to write * or @ to avoid indicating a binary gender. For example: bell* instead of the masculine singular bello or the feminine singular bella. However, at present this is not a widespread, commonly accepted option.
Languages are ever evolving. Until Italian speakers develop options for non-binary identities, each speaker has to choose a grammatical gender for themselves: masculine or feminine.
Content above adapted from Spunti: Italiano Elementare 1 by Daniel Leisawitz and Daniela Vial CC BY NC SA 4.0
Leisawitz, D., Viale, D., Open Textbook Library, & Muhlenberg College. (2019).Spunti : italiano elementare 1 (Ser. Open textbook library). Muhlenberg College. March 20, 2024,
