5.1.1. Gender of Italian nouns

The vast majority of singular nouns end in –o or –a. Those ending in –o are usually masculine, e.g., il quaderno (“the notebook”), while those ending in –a, e.g., la pianta (“the plant”), are usually feminine.

If your noun ends in –e in the singular, e.g., il giornale, la chiave, it can be either masculine or feminine (you will need to check a dictionary or its accompanying article to confirm its gender). Two important exceptions are pertinent here:

If your noun is of foreign origin, e.g., il computer, il poster, il pub, la password, l’internet, etc., the tendency is to treat the noun as masculine unless the corresponding Italian word is clearly feminine, e.g., la password corresponds to la parola (feminine) in standard Italian. However as you can see from the examples above, many foreign words are treated as masculine—il is the singular masculine definite article.