♪ ♪ ♪ Nel nome del Padre e del Figlio † e dello Spirito Santo. #twitterangelus #it
— Mark Dobson (@MarkTSoaPM) Gennaio 3, 2013
Some time ago I took a look at the Lord's Prayer in Italian, from first principles. So when someone on Twitter was asking for “suggestions on how to learn a smattering of Italian” I thought I’d point them there.
Then I thought I might as well revisit it with the Angelus, since I actually tweet it pretty regularly and it might be more useful. I don’t feel the need to repeat everything that I already blogged, but I thought I could do it as a kind of, well, revision. There are probably a few things I might go into in further detail, but not so many. So here we go again.
These are the masculine nouns in the Angelus:
| singular | plural | English | |
|---|---|---|---|
| il nome | i nomi | the name(s) | nominate |
| il padre | i padri | the father(s) | |
| il figlio | i figli | the son(s) | filial |
| il signore | i signori | the lord, Mr., man | |
| il frutto | i frutti | the fruit(s) | |
| il seno | i seni | the breast, womb | |
| il dio | gli dei | the god(s) | deity |
| il peccatore | i peccatori | the sinner(s) | im-peccable |
| il verbo | i verbi | the word(s) | verbal |
| il principio | i principi | the beginning, principle | |
| il secolo | i secoli | the century (pl. ages, years) | |
| il riposo | i riposi | the rest(s) | repose |
| l'angelo | gli angeli | the angel(s) | |
| l'annuncio | gli annunci | the announcement, notice | |
| lo spirito | gli spiriti | the spirit(s) |
You can see what I wrote on nouns, both masculine and feminine, last time here. Take a look before carrying on. Here there are more things to take into account.
Firstly there are some nouns which end in -io, figlio and principio. Instead of ending with a double "i", they sort of fuse into one. This isn't always the case, but I think I’m right in saying that it normally is, so let’s leave it at that.
Then there are the masculine nouns that begin with a vowel, angelo and annuncio. In a similar way to "a" and "an" in English, the "il" becomes an "l" with apostrophe. In the plural, this becomes "gli" instead of the normal "i".
The article for spirito is different too. Masculine nouns that begin in a certain way, especially z-, st- or sp-, have a third form of the article, "lo". In these cases too, the plural is "gli".
I think that’s enough to start with; there were more things that needed elaborating than I thought.
