How do I know if I've used the correct adjective ending?

There are lots of adjective endings in Italian, so it’s natural to confuse them. First of all, you need to check the gender of the noun you have used. Is it feminine or masculine? Beware, as some nouns don’t follow the usual pattern of feminine nouns ending in –a and masculine in –o, such as ‘un/il problema’, ‘un/il cellulare’ or ‘una/la mano’. Secondly, you should ask yourself whether the noun is in its singular or plural form. Plural nouns ending in –i will be masculine (e.g. i ragazzi) and those ending in –e will be feminine (e.g. le scarpe). This is usually the case, however, like with most grammar rules, there are exceptions: ‘le mani’ is feminine, even though it ends in –i and ‘i film’ is a masculine noun in its plural form, but it doesn’t end in –i. In this case, ‘un/il film’ is a foreign word that has been adopted by Italians, so instead of making it look Italian (by adding an ‘o’ to the singular and an ‘i’ to the end of the plural) or adding an ‘s’ like we do in English to make it plural (films), you only change the article from ‘un/il’ to ‘i’ to show that it’s in its plural form. You therefore have to use the article to find out the gender of ‘film’, not the last letter of the noun like we can normally do.From here, you need to see if you’ve added the right adjective ending. So, for singular nouns, the masculine adjective ending is –o and the feminine is –a. For example, ‘a/the sporty boy’ would be ‘un/il ragazzo sportivo’ and ‘a/the red car’ would be ‘una/la macchina rossa’. As you can see, this is the same as the noun ending, they mirror each other (‘o’ for ‘o’ and ‘a’ for ‘a’). In the plural, the masculine adjective ending changes to –i and the feminine to –e: ‘i ragazzi sportivi’ and ‘le macchine rosse’. However, there are a couple of special cases. Adjectives ending in –e are the same in the singular for masculine and feminine nouns. This –e changes to –i in the plural, for example ‘una/la casa grande’ to ‘le case grandi’ and ‘un/il cellulare giapponese’ to ‘i cellulari giapponesi’. Other adjectives ending in ‘e’ include: ‘difficile’, ‘felice’, ‘intelligente’, ‘veloce’ and ‘triste’.