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What is the plural of "non detto"?

I non detto?

I non detti?

The first sounds more correct to me. Does anyone know any source on this?

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  • Yeah, "i non detti" <br> I'm italian! Bye!
    – Sharon
    Apr 22, 2014 at 18:21

3 Answers 3

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I would agree that il non detto might include literally everything untold, even if it's from many subjects or about many topics.
However, if one wants to underline that there are several hidden/inexplicit meanings, i non detti is usually used, according to Google Ngram, in the books on rhetoric and communications, while i non detto has no mentions in the Italian corpus at all. A direct search yields only one book, where it's actually used as i "non detto", with quotation marks.

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I'm Italian and I would say that "i non detti" sounds more correct in my point of view, even if I would anyway prefer to use only "il non detto", including plural and singular.

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You really do not need the plural. "Il non detto" already includes, as set, all things that have been not told. It is like "Il pregresso" or "il già visto": it is the set of all the things already managed or seen

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    Consider that there might be different sets of unsaid, though, each characterized by different features. As in «… tutti “i non detto” di molti personaggi “illustri”…» or «…tutti i non-detto, le inquietudini, i sospiri, i momenti di silenzio, quelli di gioia e di sconforto…», etc.
    – user193
    Mar 6, 2014 at 11:09

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