Recently Geoff wrote an article about Luciano Lutring, “il solista del mitra” (the machine gun soloist). We had a comment from a reader asking why, in the title “il solista del mitra” we use the article il (masc. sing.) rather than la (fem. sing.), since the word solista ends in –a, which is the typical ending for female words. Well, yes, one of the first rules that a student of Italian learns is that words ending in ‘a’ are feminine singular, and those in ‘o’ are masculine singular, but, as usual, in Italian we have hundreds of exceptions to the rule, and “il solista” is a typical example. In this article I’m going to look at nouns which describe professions, starting of course with those ending in ‘-ista’.

1. Words ending in ‘–ista’

In the advert above note that even though the picture shows a female chemist the masculine ‘il tuo farmacista’ is used. This is because when we speak generically about a profession we use the masculine form.

There are many nouns referring to professions which end in ‘–ista’, e.g. dentista (dentist), musicista (musician), farmacista (pharmacist), regista (film director), stilista (fashion designer), e così via (and so on). In their singular form these words do not change ending, we can only tell by the article il, la, un, or una if they are referring to a man or a woman, e.g. Carlo fa il farmacista (Carlo works as a pharmacist: masculine singular), Giovanna fa la farmacista (Giovanna works as a pharmacist; feminine singular); Giorgio Armani è un famoso stilista italiano (Giorgio Armani is a famous Italian fashion designer; masculine singular), Prada è una famosa stilista italiana (Prada is a famous Italian fashion designer; feminine singular).

In the plural, however nouns ending in –ista behave regularly, hence we have –isti (masculine plural), and –iste (feminine plural), e.g. Carlo e Mario fanno i farmacisti (Carlo and Mario work as pharmacists; masculine plural), Giovanna e Lucia fanno le farmaciste (Giovanna and Lucia work as pharmacists; feminine plural); Giorgio Armani e Roberto Cavalli sono dei famosi stilisti italiani (Giorgio Armani and Roberto Cavalli are famous Italian fashion designers; masculine plural), Prada e Biagiotti sono delle famose stiliste italiane (Prada and Biagiotti are famous Italian fashion designers; feminine plural).

2. Words ending in ‘–nte’

Another group of words describing professions are those ending in –nte,  and these are present participles of their accompanying verbs, e.g. cantante (singer, from cantare = to sing), insegnante (teacher, from insegnare = to teach), commerciante (merchant, dealer, from commerciare = to trade, to deal). These nouns do not change from masculine to feminine either in the singular or in the plural, but you need to change the article and the adjective accordingly, e.g. Giorgio è un bravo insegnante (Giorgio is a good teacher; masculine singular), Luisa è una brava insegnante (Luisa is a good teacher; feminine singular); Giorgio e Paolo sono dei bravi insegnanti (Giorgio and Paolo are good teachers; masculine plural), Luisa e Carla sono delle brave insegnanti (Luisa and Carla are good teachers; feminine plural).

N.B. studente (student) is irregular as it is only used for the masculine singular, whilst the feminine singular is studentessa, e.g. Mario è uno studente preparato (Mario is a well prepared student), Maria è una studentessa preparata (Maria is a well prepared student). The plural form becomes studenti (masculine), and studentesse (feminine).

In part 2 we’ll take a look at professions ending in ‘–ere’, e.g. cameriere (waiter), ‘–tore’, e.g. scrittore (writer), and at some “modern” female professions which cause a lot of confusion because no one’s quite sure which form to use!