It's a capital 'i' it looks like it's a capital 'L', but it's not. so if you write in lower case it should be il. Perhaps they should write these answers in lower case letters..or use a font serif font which would be more clear ans to which letter is being used. this is the capital i "I" and this is the lower case L "l' they look the same. it's confusing...I've noticed similar replies on many discussion questions and answers.

la is fem il is masculine

Just starting out with Italian but it looks similar to Spanish so I'll give this a try ...

Most nouns ending in -o are masculine, most nouns ending in -a are feminine. But at least in Spanish there are a lot of exceptions that you just have to memorize.

In general "the apple" = "la mela" and "an apple" = "una mela". Then in some specific cases the articles are not dealt exactly in the same way. It is better to ask and read the comments whenever you find something that doesn't fit this general rule.

This is called conjugation. In English we hardly notice it because we say I eat, we eat, etc. but we do say he/she eats. In Italian the present tense of mangiare (to eat) conjugates as follows: Mangio, I eat Mangi, you eat Mangia, he/she/it eats Mangiamo, we eat Mangiate, you (plural) eat Mangiano, they eat Verbs just have to be learnt, either by repetition as here or off by heart.

first and foremost, we're talking about singular here so that means we should have il.

Second, even fi this was plural we should use I insteand of gli, because gli is the plural for lo (we use lo when we have z+vowel or s+consonant i.e. lo zucchero, lo squalo) and for l', which is something we use before smthing that starts with a vowel i.e. l'ape l'animale

"Una mela" is "an apple", it was asking for "the apple" which is "la mela."

conjugation of the verb "mangiare"
. . . . indicativo presente
io mangio . . . . . . . . I eat
tu mangi . . . . . . . . .you eat
Lui/Lei mangia . . . he/she eats
noi mangiamo . . . . we eat
voi mangiate . . . . . .you eat (you all eat)
Loro mangiano . . . .they eat

Mangi means you eat. Mangia means he/she eats

Read Bill-Roca's comment above that was written 5 years ago.

il for masculine la for feminine

There is never an apostrophe after il as il is the masculine the

Lui/lei mangi : this is the subjunctive which you could use for instance here : penso che il ragazzo mangi una mela.

Il ragazzo mangia una mela : this is a statement of fact so you have to use the normal present (indicative).

"il" for most masculine nouns;

"lo" for masculine nouns starting with: s + a consonant, ps or z;

"la" for feminine nouns ;

"l' " for any nouns starting with a vowel.

Which nouns are masculine and which are féminine? You just have to learn them as you go along although there are ways of giving an informed guess. For instance "ragazzo" ends with an "o" and it means boy so quite logically it is masculine. "ragazza" ends with an "a" and means girl so again logically it is a feminine noun.

Il ragazzo, singular masculine noun beginning with a consonant. L'uomo, singular masculine noun beginning with a vowel.