Quegli

Quegli is the masculine plural demonstrative determiner in Italian, meaning those. It is one of the forms derived from the Latin ille and is related to the other demonstratives quel and quello. In contemporary Italian, the choice between quei and quegli as determiners depends on the initial sound of the noun that follows. Quei is used before most masculine plural nouns that begin with a consonant, while quegli is used before masculine plural nouns beginning with s plus a consonant, z, ps, gn, or a vowel. Examples include quegli amici, quegli zii, and quegli alberi. The form quegli is therefore common with vowel-initial nouns as well as certain consonant clusters.

The corresponding masculine plural pronoun form is quelli, which is used when the noun is absent or replaced by the pronoun, as in Quelli sono i libri. Etymology traces gli italiani forms back to Latin ille, passing through Vulgar Latin and early Italian, with subsequent phonetic changes that produced the modern quegli in combination with quel and quello. Use of quegli is widespread in standard Italian and appears in both formal and informal contexts. Dialectal variations exist, but quegli remains the standard form for many everyday phrases referring to “those” masculine plural nouns.