Twenty to ninety-nine: ventuno, ventitré, ventotto

Twenty to ninety-nine: glue the unit on

sessanta and settanta are the pair that gets swapped at speed. Anchor each to its unit: sei, sessanta; sette, settanta.

Between the tens, Italian glues the ten onto the unit, with no space and no hyphen: Ho trentadue anni, I'm thirty-two. Three spelling rules run through the result.

The ten drops its vowel before uno and otto

uno and otto are the two units that start with a vowel, so the ten loses its last vowel:

Every other unit keeps the vowel: ventidue, ventisei, ventisette.

Tre takes an accent at the end

On its own, tre has no accent. At the end of a compound it gains one, because the stress falls there: ventitré, trentatré. Ho trentatré anni is I'm thirty-three.

Ventun anni or ventuno anni

Before a noun, the compounds ending in -uno usually lose their final o: ventun anni, twenty-one years; trentun giorni, thirty-one days. The full ventuno anni is also correct. Either way the noun is plural.

Uno is also the indefinite article

In front of a noun, one is the indefinite article and follows the article rule:

Standing alone as an answer, it agrees with what it counts: Quante case hai? Una. - How many houses do you have? One.

Age: avere, not essere

Age is something Italian has, not something it is:

• Ho ventitré anni. - I'm twenty-three. (literally: I have twenty-three years)
• Quanti anni hai? - How old are you?

123

1. 1Ho cinque anni!
2. 2cinque
3. 3Quanti anni hai?

Count the candles: the birthday child has five years, ho cinque anni.

Never use essere: sono ventitré anni is wrong. Essere and avere has the other things Italian has where English is.