What is the difference between bellisima and bellisimo ?

Bellisimo is male, bellisima is female. But the words can refer to inanimate things as well. Italian is one of those languages where words have genders just like Spanish, French, etc.

I think that’s right. I tried to learn Italian years ago. :P

Male and female

Two esses: bellissimo (of a male or something that is masculine) and bellissima (of a female or something that is feminine). If you’re in the audience shouting praise for a performer at the opera, shout bellissima for the soprano and bellissimo for the tenor.

@Jeruba is right.

Furthermore, “bellissima” or “bellissimo” means “very beautiful”. “The most beautiful” would be “la più bella” or “il più bello”.

Ancora, Ancora, Bellissima Jeruba! Bene rispota! Ciao bella! *Wild applauds here

Buona risposta.

What if I am saying an object is beautiful, do I say bellisimo or bellisima ?

Depends on the genre.

btw welcome on Fluther ^^

Ok, so if I see a guy it’s “Bellisiomo” and if I see something feminine or a beautiful woman it’s “Bellisima” got it :)

What about an object ?

@Hibernate – What about if I want to say a song, movie, or book is beautiful ?

Or today is very beautiful ?

Generally, if it ends with o, it’s bellissimo, and if it ends with a, it’s bellissima.

@bob_ What do you mean ? If a song ends with o I should use bellissimo ?

@bob_ ROFLMAO! Whoops… Mixing my nome con aggettivo again… LOL

Bella cosa = beautiful thing

@GabrielsLamb – So if I want to say a song or book is beautiful, I can use Bella cosa right ?

@partyrock If the word ends with a or o, e.g., bellissima ragazza, bellissimo ragazzo. Song (canzone) is feminine, so you’d say bellissima canzone.

@Hibernate, I think you mean gender (of the word), not genre.

@partyrock, are you familiar with any language other than English? In many languages, nouns have gender—masculine, feminine, and in some cases neuter—and the adjectives change their form in agreement with the gender of the noun. Gender doesn’t necessarily have to do with sex, as in male and female; it’s just a way of classifying nouns by their structure and their patterns of declension.

My bad! It totally is bellissima and belissimo! @Jeruba is right.

Bella cosa is like saying “So Beautiful”

*But I speak Staten Island Itanglish slang at best and I have absolutely no breeding to speak of

‘Una bella cosa’ means ‘a beautiful thing’.

@Jeruba you are right. ^^

In Spanish bellissimo dia is beautiful day so it follows that the a in Spanish is not gender bound but gender neutral. Not knowing in fact I can only extrapolate to like gender rule in other Romance Languages namely French, Italian. That there is a gender neutral noun adjective and that it would end in O. Dia is such a gender neutral noun in Spanish. The difference in the phonetics is that two l’s in Spanish are pronounced ye and in Italian li.

@partyrock You use Bellissimo when it’s for day or a movie or anything that the subject is not mentioned! In Italian you use masculine form in general, unless the subject is mentioned!! I always had hard time with this as well, finally learnt that from an Italian!