Breakdown of Il bambino è triste, ma la bambina è felice.
essere
to be
ma
but
felice
happy
triste
sad
il bambino
the child
la bambina
the little girl
Questions & Answers about Il bambino è triste, ma la bambina è felice.
Why do both triste and felice end in "-e"? Shouldn't they end in "-o" for the boy and "-a" for the girl?
While many Italian adjectives change their ending to match masculine (-o) or feminine (-a) nouns, there is a whole group of adjectives that naturally end in -e. These adjectives are unisex in the singular. So, whether you are talking about il bambino or la bambina, they use the exact same adjectives: triste and felice.
Since this lesson is about plurals, how would we change this sentence to say "The boys are sad, but the little girls are happy"?
In that plural sentence, why did triste and felice change to tristi and felici?
For adjectives that end in -e in the singular (like triste and felice), the plural ending is always -i. It doesn't matter if the noun is masculine or feminine. Both bambini and bambine will take the -i ending for these specific adjectives.
Just a quick refresher: why does è have an accent mark on it here?
The accent mark tells us this is the verb "is" (è). Without the accent mark, e simply means "and". It's a very small visual difference, but it completely changes the meaning of the sentence!
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