Learn Italian: L'amico è intelligente? - Is the friend intelligent?

In Italian, you don't need to swap the word order to make a yes/no question like we do in English. You just use the exact same word order as a normal statement and make your voice go up at the end (or use a question mark in writing). Because of this, L'amico è intelligente can mean either "The friend is intelligent" or "Is the friend intelligent?" depending entirely on your tone!

Why is it L'amico instead of il amico?

Because amico starts with a vowel. The standard masculine word for "the" is il, but when the noun right after it starts with a vowel, it drops its own vowel and attaches to the word with an apostrophe. This makes it much easier and smoother to say out loud.

Amico is a masculine word, so why doesn't intelligente end in -o?

Not all Italian adjectives end in -o for masculine and -a for feminine. Intelligente belongs to a different group of adjectives that naturally end in -e in their singular form. These adjectives use the exact same ending for both masculine and feminine words, so you would also say l'amica è intelligente for a female friend.

Why does è have a grave accent mark pointing downwards?

The accent mark tells you that è is a verb meaning "is". Without the accent mark, the word e just means "and". They sound almost identical when spoken, so the accent is crucial in writing to tell them apart.