Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Le uova sode e sopracciglia finte

Prompt: A full background, minimal collage artwork featuring a hard-boiled eggs and eyebrows with an Italian flag and with saturated colors arranged on a rustic red background
Microsoft Designer: hard-boiled eggs and eyebrows.

A nonsensical title – hard-boiled eggs and fake eyebrows – to show what we’ll talk about in this post: Italian nouns that feminine but not ending in E as you might expect. We covered this topic extensively in the post A Rule of Thumb for Predicting the Gender of Italian Language Nouns. Here, we will talk about a few of those nouns and show them in interesting phrases you see in the Italian language. “Interesting” for those of us learning Italian in that they take a few seconds to process as correct.

I’m interested in those moments - call it a cognitive disconnect/reconnect - when learning a language because it means that some concepts are not yet hardwired as much as I’d like. In this case, when I see the E at the end of the adjective modifying one of these feminine nouns or the article with E in front of the noun, it stops me for a fraction of a second to ask, is that correct.

Being in Bergamo, I’ll use some examples we see:
  • le mura veneziane di Bergamo
  • le valli Bergamasche
  • la neve nelle Prealpi Bergamasche
It’s not “le mure” or “le valle” or “le prealpe”.

Other examples:

l'alpe (monte) / le Alpi (catena montuosa europea)
  • la neve sulle Alpi
  • le cime delle Alpi
il muro (di casa, palazzo, ecc.) / le mura (cinta muraria)
  • una passeggiata sulle mura
  • le mura veneziane di Bergamo
  • i baluardi delle mura di Bergamo
un'ala / le ali
  • i biscotti alle ali d'angelo
  • sulle ali di un angelo
il dito / le dita
  • l'artrite delle dita
  • il formicolio alle dita
una frase / le frasi
  • le frasi fatte
  • le frasi più belle e interessanti
il ginocchio / le ginocchia
  • le ginocchia di una persona anziana
  • le ginocchia sbucciate - “skinned knees”
un labbro / le labbra
  • l'herpes alle labbra
  • le labbra cucite - “my lips are sealed”
  • le labbra screpolate
una mano / le mani
  • a mani nude
  • le mani vuote
una nube / le nubi
  • le nubi estese
  • la classificazione delle nubi
l'osso / le ossa
  • le ossa del corpo umano
  • il dolore alle ossa
il sopracciglio / le sopracciglia
  • le sopracciglia finte nere naturali invisibili per uomo
  • il colore delle tue sopracciglia
un uovo / le uova
  • la caccia alle uova
  • le uova strapazzate
  • le uova sode
una valle / le valli
  • le valli Bergamasche
  • nelle valli Bolognesi

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