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I gatti hanno le orecchie piccole.

I gatti hanno le orecchie piccole.
Cats have small ears.
From Lesson 136:Irregular noun plurals (le mani, gli uomini)·Italian

Breakdown of I gatti hanno le orecchie piccole.

il gatto
the cat
piccolo
small
avere
to have
l'orecchio
the ear (m)

Questions & Answers about I gatti hanno le orecchie piccole.

Why is it le orecchie? Isn't the word for ear masculine?
Yes, in the singular, "ear" is masculine: l'orecchio. However, it is one of several body parts in Italian that are masculine in the singular but become feminine in the plural. Because it switches to feminine, we use the feminine plural article le and the ending changes to -e, making it le orecchie.
Why is the adjective piccole used instead of piccoli?
This happens because orecchie is a feminine plural word. Even though its singular form (l'orecchio) is masculine, adjectives always have to match the current gender and number of the noun they describe. Since orecchie is feminine plural, the adjective piccolo (small) must change to its feminine plural form, piccole.
Why is there an h in orecchie?
The h is there to keep the hard "k" sound! In Italian, when the letter c is followed by an e or an i, it normally makes a soft "ch" sound (like in "cheese"). To keep the hard "k" sound from the singular orecchio, we have to insert an h before the -e ending.
The English translation says "Cats," not "The cats." Why does the Italian sentence start with I?
In Italian, when you make a general statement about an entire category of things (like "cats in general"), you must use a definite article (il, la, i, le). In English, we drop the word "the" for these general statements, but Italian requires it!

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