`*I am Italian, and I can assure you that there is no ``real`` neuter gender in our language (as the last two users correctly pointed out): there are however many traces of Latin's neuter gender left here and there. For example there is a rough corrispective of English pronoun it in Italian, in the sense that indicater an object rather than a person, but has both feminine and masculine form (respectively essa and esso). It is interesting to note that in some areas (especially in Tuscany) of Italy people sometimes use a ``correct`` masculine form for these words (orecchio -> orecchi and so on) in spoken language. Also: :* common plural form of orecchio is orecchie (a standard plural feminine) :* membro means ``member``, like in and organization, and membra means ``limbs`` :* an exception to the above rule, membro is used in literature meaning ``penis`` (really) :* in familiar language ossi is sometimes used as a plural for osso, meaning scattered bones, like the leftovers from a meal, while ossa is more tied to the human skeleton as a whole :* muri is probably the most widely used plural form of muro: mura is used only by people who speak more correctly overall, especially in reference to city walls, as opposed to house walls :* present mura comes from the plural of murus, -i, Latin for house walls; city walls are moenia, -ium (a ``pluralia tantum``, that is, a word that only exists or has a different meaning in plural) :* risa is the plural form of riso only in the meaning of ``laugh, smile``: when riso means ``rice``, the plural (though seldom used) is risi :* today, fusa means the sound that a cat makes when he purrs (hope I got that correctly): we say ``il gatto sta facendo le fusa`` :* fondamento never means the foundations of an house (rather, it means ``proof, base`` in abstract sense, for example in relation to a theory) while fondamenta always means house foundations :* le fila is only ever used in the phrase ``tirare le fila``, meaning having control in a secretive manner; la fila instead means ``queue``, always relating to the meaning of thread (filo)  There are other things that demonstrate that many of these words are ``irregular`` in some way, as most of the Italian is (Italian verbs have lots of little variations like these). The basic concept is that in Italian you don't get much adherence to the rules as in other languages, even if there is plenty of them.  `