Vaccines

The ninth entry is la risposta cellulare, and its adjective belongs to a class that a reader of English keeps taking for the other one. Italian adjectives come in two shapes. Most have four endings and announce the gender out loud: vivo gives viva, vivi and vive, which is why nobody could read il vaccino vivo attenuato as feminine. The second class ends in -e, has only two forms, one singular and one plural, and says nothing whatever about gender: cellulare, virale, vaccinale, neutralizzante. So la risposta cellulare and il vettore virale wear the same ending while being feminine and masculine, and only the article and the noun give it away. The bite comes in the plural, where the ending changes for a reason that has nothing to do with the noun: le risposte cellulari ends in -i and not in -e, because an adjective of this class follows its own pattern rather than copying the word beside it. Guessing le risposte cellulare is the commonest way to be heard translating.