Un ingegnere controlla la porta rotta.

the door

Breakdown of Un ingegnere controlla la porta rotta.

• controllare: to check
• rotto: broken
• l’ingegnere: the engineer

Questions & Answers about Un ingegnere controlla la porta rotta.

Why is Un used here instead of Uno, Il, Lo, or La?

Un is the masculine singular indefinite article in Italian, used before most consonant-initial nouns.

• You would use uno only before masculine nouns starting with s+consonant, z, gn, ps, etc. (e.g. uno studente, uno psicologo).
• Il and lo are definite articles (“the”), while la is the feminine definite article.

Here, ingegnere is a masculine noun beginning with a consonant, so the correct indefinite form is un ingegnere.

Why does ingegnere end with -e, and how would you say “a female engineer”?

Ingegnere belongs to the third-declension group of nouns that end in -e in the singular and -i in the plural (masc. or fem. forms alike).

Singular/plural:
• un ingegnere → due ingegneri

To indicate a female engineer, you have two common options:

1. Keep the same noun and change the article:
   • un’ ingegnere or una ingegnere (epicene use)
2. Use the feminine ending -a (increasingly preferred):
   • un’ingegnera or una ingegnera

What does controlla mean here? Doesn’t it mean “controls”?