Sustantivo
As has already been said the word endings that fill Italian are for the poetry and beauty of the language. English is a predominantly functional language and can be equated with modern architecture, it lacks decoration. However Italian endings are decoration similar to the gargoils and other sculptures you find on the outsides of beautiful old buildings. Italian is the "William Morris" of languages.
You might recall that the noun endings are usually;
~ o - masculine ~ a - feminine ~ i - masculine plural ~ e - feminine plural
but if you glance at the Nouns Tables you will see other less common endings that determine gender also.
The nouns tables contain around 1300 nouns divided up so I hope you can find the nouns you need on any particular day.
Every noun is listed in it's singular and plural forms with the articles that go with it. Both the articles and the noun endings are highlighted so you can see exactly how the articles and endings go together;
mummy
However sometimes you find no highlighted ending like in;
daddy
That is because 'papà', despite ending in 'a' is actually masculine and so the ending does not tell you anything about the article you should use with it. Look out for these cases where the ending doesn't tell you the gender. Take the whole gender thing with a pinch of salt, after all 'breast' is 'il seno'.
On the left in the 'Count' column in some cases there is a number. The bigger the number the more often it is likely to be used. Words with big numbers are worth learning first.
On the right you will sometimes see 'Note!'. If you move your mouse there it will give you some more information about the word. A noun like 'the sewing' is connected to the verb 'cucire', to sew. If the verb is regular then the note will say that. If it is not then the number in (brackets) is the page in the verb book 'Bescherelle Italien les verbes'. sadly this is a book of Italian verbs for French people and for some reason they have never made an English edition. I guess they just don't want the money!!
The first noun page that comes up when you first click on 'Nouns Tables' will be the page for 'person'. You can always find this noun page by scrolling to the bottom of any noun page and clicking on the words 'START AGAIN'.
At the top of any noun page you also have something like
A person is; a type of animal, a type of life, a part of nature, a subject of biology,
Yes I know that this is not good English, sorry, but the computer has its limits! In this case, clicking on animal, life, nature or biology, will take you to a noun page for each of those nouns.
In the tables, if the English word for the noun appears like this family then it is a link to the noun page for that word.
You can navigate your way through the nouns by clicking on the links provided.
If you are interested the Italian word for Oak Tree - Starting from 'Person' look in that top line and click on 'life'. Then in the tables for 'life', click on 'plant' then 'tree' and you will see it in the table headers 'Types'.
You can re-sort any table by a particular column by clicking the white circle button at the top of that column, so click at the top of the 'English' column to alphabetically sort by the English name, or click on the 'Italian Sing' column if you prefer it sorted by the Italian name.
Well that is it, enjoy exploring the Nouns Tables and if you need to refer back to this text just click 'Nouns' again, on the menu. When you return to the Nouns Tables it will remember your page until you finally close your web browser.