ciliegia, ciliegie ("cherry"/"cherries"). Note that the presence of an i in the plural ending has no impact on the pronunciation in this case. when the i is stressed, it always remains in plural: farmacia / farmacie ("chemist's shop(s)"), nevralgia / nevralgie ("neuralgia(s)"). Words in -co and -go behave irregularly: for some words the plural form causes the hard consonant to become soft, and for others the consonant remains hard. "The grammarians are skeptical of any attempt at giving a ruling about this area". There are, however, certain rules of thumb: plurals are formed with -chi and -ghi if the last letter before the suffix is a consonant or a stressed vowel: fungo / funghi ("mushroom(s)"), stecco / stecchi ("stick(s)"), mago / maghi ("magician(s)"), fuoco / fuochi ("fire(s)") plurals are formed with -ci and -gi if the last letter before the suffix is an unstressed vowel: comico / comici ("comedian(s)"), medico / medici ("physician(s)") in words ending with -logo suffix, the plural is usually in -gi when -logo means "expert" or "student", corresponding to English -logist (e.g. archeologo / archeologi, "archaeologist(s)"), while it is in -ghi when it means "speech" or "reasoning", corresponding often to English -logue/-log (e.g. catalogo / cataloghi, "catalogue(s)"). there are exceptions such as amico / amici ("friend(s)"), greco / greci ("Greek(s)"), valico / valichi ("mountain pass(es)"), carico / carichi ("cargo(s)"). Words in -ca and -ga form plurals in -che and -ghe, e.g. amica / amiche ("female friend(s)") Nouns Most nouns are derived from Latin. Many of these are themselves borrowed from Greek (e.g. poeta below). Although Italian nouns do not inflect for case, they are derived from a mixture of the Latin nominative and accusative cases: Nouns ending in any letter other than -a, -e or -o, as well as nouns ending in a stressed vowel, are normally invariable in the plural. Thus: la gru / le gru ("the crane(s)", from Latin grūs / grūes) la città / le città ("the city(ies)", contracted form of archaic cittade, cittadi, from Latin cīvitātem, cīvitātēs) il caffè / i caffè ("the coffee(s)") il film / i film ("the film(s)") There are certain words (derived from Latin second-declension neuter nouns) that are masculine in the singular and feminine or masculine in the plural. Examples include: il braccio / le braccia or i bracci ("the arm(s)") l'uovo / le uova ("the egg(s)") il ginocchio / le ginocchia or i ginocchi ("the knee(s)")