Professor Dave here, let’s learn how to use bello.
Italians think lots of things are beautiful, and lots of those beautiful things are clothes.
You may have heard the Italian word for beautiful, it’s bello.
This adjective will take different forms, and it can go before or after the noun it
describes, depending on the context, so let’s learn how to use bello, while learning the
names of all the articles of clothing that Italians find so hard to resist.
First of all, if bello comes after the noun, it’s not so tricky.
We have bello, bella, belli, and belle, depending on the gender and number of the noun.
This is no different from the adjectives we have learned.
But if bello goes before the noun, it’s a little trickier.
Remember how the adjective buono imitated the indefinite article uno, and followed those
rules instead?
Bello will do the same thing, but for the definite article.
So instead of the four endings we are used to, there are several more.
Here’s what we mean.
If referring to a book, you would say il libro.
But if someone gives you a beautiful, ornate book as a gift, you might want to use bello,
in which case you say bel libro.
As you can see, bello often becomes shortened.
L’albero becomes bell’albero.
Let’s fill out this chart so you can get the hang of it.
Now it’s your turn to try.
Say we go shopping for clothes and we see so many beautiful things.
What might we be heard to exclaim?
We sure saw a lot of lovely things today, how will you report all your findings to your friends?
To find out, let’s check comprehension.