"Sei una tigre."

[mbbb]

Now that I know how to call people a tiger, I think I've learned all the Italian I'll ever need.

[thenino85]

Is this like being a cougar?

[nictheman]

I prefer calling someone a tiger to a dog or an insect... :)

[squaredomino]

Depends what kind of attention you're after, I suppose...

[Michelangelo75]

How is tiger a female? why una instead of un tigre?

[Darkflemy]

The word is feminine but refers to both male and female animals. My guess is "una tigressa" would refer only to the female animal.

Don't confused gender and sex. Languages with gender don't have a logic about gender. There is no reason why tigra is feminine in Italian and masculine in French.

[adnav3]

men out there, this is a very important sentence for you to learn!! LOLOLOL xP

[brizzolara]

rawr!

[JenniferAron]

Can I call my boyfriend a tiger ;) or is it not appropriate because of the gender?

[jesslc]

I think you can. The gender of the noun isn't related to the gender of the subject.

[JenniferAron]

i noticed in Spanish, tiger is masculine (el tigre), in Italian, feminine.

[Michelangelo75]

How is tiger a female? why una instead of un tigre?

[jesslc]

It just is. Words in Italian are either feminine or masculine - and there's not a lot of rhyme or reason why one word is feminine and another word is masculine.

The Italian words for most animals have masculine gender (un cane, un cavallo, un topo), but not all (una tigre, una scimmia, etc)

For further reading try these:
http://italian.about.com/od/grammar/a/gender-of-italian-nouns.htm
http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=2&nav=messages&webtag=ab-italian&tid=9540

[Gwenyth77]

Mamma mia! Who wrote this course? Does anyone realize that this sentence has sexual connotations?
Sei una tigre a letto = You're a tiger in bed. ( can be said to male or female)