Family and Friends - Describing Relationships
Talk about your family and friends in Italian. Learn the words for family members, how to describe getting on with people, and the neat rule for saying my with a single family member.
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Family and friends in Italian 👪
To talk about your family and friends in Italian you need the **vocabulary**, a few describing words like **simpatico** (nice) and **arrabbiato** (angry), and the **possessives** for my and your. Italian has a neat rule for **my**: normally you say **il mio** or **la mia**, keeping the word for the, but for a **single** family member you drop it, so it is **mio padre**, not il mio padre.
Words for the family 📖
Learn each noun WITH its article: il or la tells you its gender.
il or la ⚖️
Every Italian noun is masculine or feminine, and the article shows which. Most masculine nouns end in -o and most feminine in -a, but learn each with its article to be safe.
Match the Italian to the English 🔗
- il padre
- la madre
- il fratello
- la sorella
- father
- mother
- brother
- sister
Getting on 🤝
Marco says: vado d'accordo con mia sorella. What does the phrase andare d'accordo mean?
- to get on well with someone
- to argue with someone
- to live with someone
- to look like someone
Saying my with family 🔑
For **my**, Italian normally uses **il mio** (masculine) or **la mia** (feminine), keeping the word for the. But with a **single** family member you **drop** it: mio padre, mia madre, mio fratello, mia sorella. In the **plural** the article comes back: **i miei fratelli** (my brothers) and **le mie sorelle** (my sisters).
Match the possessive to its meaning 🔀
- mio padre
- mia madre
- i miei fratelli
- le mie sorelle
- my father
- my mother
- my brothers
- my sisters
Correct Italian? ✅
Select the TWO phrases that are correct Italian for a single family member.
- mio padre
- mia madre
- il mio padre
- la mia madre
Build the sentence 🪜
An interactive activity.
Complete the Italian 🧩
For a single family member Italian drops the article. My father is _____ padre and my mother is _____ madre. Your father is _____ padre and your mother is _____ madre. His or her mother is _____ madre.
Spot the true statements 🖍️
An interactive activity.
Article or not? 🧭
An interactive activity.
Explain the rule ✍️
An interactive activity.