Nouns in red are feminine, nouns in blue are masculine. masculine. Luckily this is one of many myths about the French language. Socially speaking, however, I personally find that it depends. When it comes to the passé composé, for example, when you conjugate a verb with the auxiliary être, the past participle must agree with the subject’s gender (and number). This article includes a great list of French word gender games you can play on your own or with a group. 32 years in France and I’m still lost with word gender. It is also helpful for me to remember feminine words can end in masculine. There’s a sad little trick to the French language regarding gender: No matter how many feminine nouns you have, if there’s just one masculine one, it takes precedence. Thank you. Have I misunderstood or, in this case, with two different meanings of the word command (and two different ways to write it), one case has a feminine form and the other a masculine one? Most of his suggestions are right. Some of the most popular are: You’ve probably come across lists of French vocabulary with a definite or indefinite article in front of each word. Now let’s see why knowing the gender of French words is so important. They go to the cinema every week. So is different from le commandement (masculine) It’s 1 error out of every 5 nouns spoken. You may also want to check if it belongs on the list of typically masculine or feminine word endings. Follow edited Oct 30 '13 at 3:13. 2. thanks. Except words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme (these endings often indicate masculine words). French isn’t the only language whose nouns have genders, and masculine and feminine aren’t the only possible genders for nouns in certain other languages. You may have heard that there is only one way to know the gender of a noun: to learn it by heart. I couldn’t find that ending in the list, oiseau ends with u NORMALLY words ending with U are mas… so concerning possessive adj then it has to be mon oiseau, I think you should use Mon as there will be a vowel clash if u use ma. In fact, that’s one of those (maybe few) rules that has no exception. But doesn’t it then confuse you when you speak English? Vous êtes allé(e)(s) Choose the right one for you and you’ll get them right a vast majority of the time. I quickly picked it up, and we’d sing it every afternoon. Hover on a tile to learn new words with the same root. Except words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme (these endings often indicate masculine words). Un chat, une chatte. Great post! Did you know that ‘aigle’ (eagle) was feminine until the early 19th century, when Napoléon decided it would become its emblem (more noble than the rooster, right). multi-word colours Example: Il aime les fauteuils jaune citron. Ex. In Hungarian, you spell everything just the way you hear it (phonetic writing) – no silent letters. The same would be true for “école” for example. In these cases, the gender of the noun will be indicated by whether it is preceded by el (masculine) or la (feminine). 5 years ago . Not really, for example: une chanson, un fleuve. I am confused with the é ending cause fraternité, egalité are females….are those exceptions? I did start looking at the words seeing if I could figure out anyway to automatically decide which one is feminine and which is masculine and did start noticing that the majority of feminine words I came across mainly seemed to end in e (which is handy ‘cos Elle ends in E and Il doesn’t, and so does une), there was a few that didn’t quite fit into the list like the ones that ended with ion but this page has helped make that more clearer. Maybe I’m rationalizing my not being able to learn 100% but it’s all a fun journey! When you find a noun ending in –ista (e.g. Depending on your particular signs, when you consider all of your major planets: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn along with your rising sign, you can be anywhere from more masculine to very masculine or more feminine to very feminine. Many people are confused about that, so it’s okay to use the feminine or masculine form if you talk about the candy. FEMININE: the great majority of words that end in -e or -ion. Tu es allé(e) As I said in the article, this list is simply here for reference, I absolutely don’t recommend to learn it by heart. Start studying Gender of Adjectives. And remember the French rule of masculine words always having dominance over feminine ones. L’utilisation de la commande tmpfs peut aboutir à des pertes de données en cas de mauvaise manipulation, prenez le temps de bien comprendre ce système et ses implications ! Want more practice, or different ways to practice? In this episode, I’ll introduce to you the main rules on feminine & masculine usage and some of the common exceptions to the rule. Exceptions (usually): words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme. Probably a bit yes, but lots of people are trying to change that. From what we know about ancient texts and fragments of words, as well as by trying to reconstruct primitive languages based on modern-day language families, it seems that humans began by classifying nouns as living or not living. Yeah hangul is quite easy to learn. That said, making mistakes won’t prevent understanding in most cases. A noun is a word referring to a person, animal, place, thing, feeling or idea (e.g. If a word ends with ‘eux’ is it masculine or feminine? Pay attention when you watch, read, and listen to French. Would I say "meine Schatz" because my date is feminine? You’ll discover how genders influence these elements in the last section of this article. For example, la lune, ta plume, un mot, ta porte. In a 2008 study , native French speakers were asked to determine the gender of 93 words (which it turns out were all masculine). Is that therefore a masculine word or a feminine word? Improve this question. No matter how much research you do or how many linguistics classes you take in college (trust me), you’ll never get a definitive answer to this. Masculine plural: fatigués Just read, that’s the best way to get grammar without breaking your brain trying to remember abstract and boring rules that always have tons of exceptions. According to a study by McGill University, a noun’s ending indicates its gender in 80% of cases . Your website is really a cool finding, and will make my day. Oiseau is masculine. La chemise (feminine) is a (men's) shirt. As you can see, these categories don’t cover every subject in the French language, so this method should be used with another one to be able to guess a word’s gender with accuracy. Elle n’est vraiment pas confortable. I take french and I am studying for a midterm. After hours trying to figure out why féminisme (feminism) is masculine and masculinité (masculinity) is feminine, you’ve come to the most logical conclusion: the gender of French nouns was randomly chosen by a bunch of sadistic  linguists. This is also true for other compound tenses. Notice that despite the first two items being feminine, because un sandwich is masculine, the entire group is referred to with ils , the masculine plural pronoun. I checked to be sure, it isn’t there!!! French also has masculine and feminine articles; le, les, and un are the masculine articles, while la, les, and une are the feminine ones. feminine + masculine = masculine plural adjective; Some adjectives remain unchanged in the feminine and plural forms. You could probably master hangul in less than a week. For example, traditionally, jobs like teachers and writers were only used with masculine nouns. These are adjectives you can use to guess how other adjectives with similar endings will change. This may have had practical, as well as religious, purposes. What you need to know is that the word has a gender, not the concept it represents. That idea is valid for learning and bettering any language, be it one’s mother tongue or a foreign language. Adjectives don’t have a gender as such, but their ending depends on the gender of the noun they describe. Sorry! I think one of the most confusing though is remembering that un chat is masculine – why on earth is a cat considered masculine in French when pretty much every other language even English refers to it as feminine and a “feline” (although just noticed even the French word for feline is masculine!!). This is also the case when you’re talking about people and other living things: Cléa, Hélène, Rose, et Paul aiment les films. You could say, “They’re just words.” But the truth is, the logic behind this rule was probably that males are more important and powerful than females. 12k 3 3 gold badges 32 32 silver badges 73 73 bronze badges. Ils is the standard if it’s a mixed group. Other than these changes, when it comes to gender in the French language, not much has happened in terms of everyday vocabulary and grammar. -té: la santé, la bonté; Remove ads. I saw into a youtube vid that scandinavian languages have also a third gender, the neutral nouns. Spanish nouns have a gender, which is either feminine (like la mujer or la luna) or masculine (like el hombre or el sol). Your answer to each word will be either "masculine" or "feminine". el cuaderno. The gender of some nouns makes sense (homme [man] is masculine, femme [woman] is feminine) but others don't: the words personne [person] and victime [victim] are always feminine, even when the person or victim is a man! She has taught English and French for more than ten years, most notably as an assistante de langue vivante for L'Education Nationale. cause then there is this abandonné and it is male adjective…..can you help me out? In French, you have a masculine “the” (le) and a feminine “the” (la). Merci Beaucoup! PLAY. Of course, some words change very little when it comes to the noun they’re modifying. These include: adjectives made from nouns (exceptions: rose, fauve and mauve) Example: Il aime les fauteuils orange. How to say estuche In English - Translation of estuche to English by Nglish, on-line comprehensive Spanish – English and English – Spanish Dictionary, Translation and English learning by Britannica, Including: Translation of words and sentences, English synonyms, example sentences, related phrases, audio pronunciation, personal word lists and more Hungarian grammar is one of the trickiest there is (even though nouns don’t have genders), but I must say, that writing is way more logical than French. Have you tried it yet? Seems such a lot of word endings to be searching for during a conversation. If we called that same structure “un monument” then it is masculine. As for vowels, there exist 12, of different lengths – o is shorter, than ó, or u is shorter than ú, etc. -œur: la sœur, la mœur (but le cœur); So it is NOT the object itself that is masculine or feminine…. no they are a lot of exceptions like le the, le cafe and etc. Musée , lycée etc think museum lyceum …suggests masculine? Er, the grammar rule is that -eux endings are masculine; the feminine of the word would end with -euse. Actually I’ve learned a few languages now – Dutch, Welsh, BSL and French and I find it funny that it’s mainly English that causes the problems because pretty much all these other languages all have feminine and masculine words, and since moving to Shropshire ‘cos we’re so close to the Welsh border here I find some people round here even refer to inanimate objects as “he” or “she” (like when we had the chimney swept the guy came round and said “she’s a good fire, she is” not “you’ve got a good fire there” or “its a good fire”, which I guess comes from the direct Welsh translation ‘cos in Welsh everything is either masculine or feminine too, there is no it (there is no direct yes or no either in Welsh which is even more confusing at least in French you have oui or non!). When I was teaching French in Korea, I could see how difficult it was for Koreans to know in what orders to put the words, which is relatively easy for English speakers. The more you read and hear French, the most you will be able to automatically determine whether a word is feminine or masculine. Powerful as most of the weapons knife, sword, gun, canon, missile, rocket, You can see some signs of social change in in the French language itself. I tend to do that too in English. Masculine. el diccionario. Other nouns follow this pattern. And they had even more trouble when it came to a list of feminine words. Isn’t it?! Maybe they have also one gender to speak about aliens!? Many other professions can now also be feminized, since the concept has been officially recognized by the Académie Française (a ruling that was only made in 2019). Free 5 day French Immersion Mini Course. There is a continuum in astrology between the masculine and feminine signs with Pisces being most feminine and Aries being most masculine. French adjectives change based on the gender and number of the noun they modify, 13 common French mistakes that’ll make you feel awkward, -an, -and, -ant, -ent, -in, -int, -om, -ond, -ont, -on (but not after s/c¸), -air, -er, -erf, -ert, -ar, -arc, -ars, -art, -our, -ours, -or, -ord, -ors, -ort, -ir, -oir, -eur, -aie, -oue, -eue, -ion, -te, – ée, -ie, -ue, -asse, -ace, -esse, -ece, -aisse, -isse/-ice, -ousse, -ance, -anse, -ence, -once, -enne, -onne, -une, -ine, -aine, -eine, -erne, -ande, -ende, -onde, -ade, -ude, -arde, -orde, -euse, -ouse, -ase, -aise, -ese, -oise, -ise, -yse, -ose, -use, -ache, -iche, -eche, -oche, -uche, -ouche, -anche, -ette, -ete, – ête, -atte, -otte, -oute, -orte, -ante, -ente, -inte, -onte. Still, whether there’s logic to them or not, genders are a part of the French language and knowing them is essential when it comes to speaking and writing correctly. Getting the gender right is important in order to avoid confusion and to speak the language correctly. Thanks. You can see this, for example, in the case of English, which did have genders in its older forms, as well as a formal and informal “you”. Sadly, some other jobs, like un médecin (a doctor) only take the masculine pronoun. The passé composé tense is the most striking example of the influence of genders and number on conjugation, although any verb tense that uses an auxiliary verb can be influenced by the gender and number of the subject. I’m glad you like it :). Masculine vs Feminine We all know that facial hair, a muscular body and difference in voice quality from females are masculine traits while a curvy and fuller body, a slender and delicate silhouette, and the ability to give birth to babies are feminine traits. Feminine and masculine in French. el monedero. This rule is not consistently followed, however, and some well-known companies (such as Google) are referred to as either masculine or feminine. By the way, 80% accuracy is horrible accuracy. Glass , mirror, pen, pencil sounds present in the language. Unlike English, French nouns are either MASCULINE or FEMININE This is known as the GENDER 2. Siempre guardo mis lentes en su estuche para que no se rayen.I always keep my glasses in their case so that they don't get scratched. But which do I use bavard (masculine) or bavarde (feminine)? Masculine plural: bons At the cafeteria, Daniel chose an apple, a bowl of soup, and a sandwich. Especially with feminine gender, so basically while reading I keep an eye on feminine articles and I write down the most unpredictable to me, like: la mer la limite la foto la rentrée la chaleur la poitrine la bouffe la suite la souris la vidéo la valeur la odeur la mosaïque la planète la signification la météo la glace You use the masculine form if there is at least one man in the group. For Example. If there is one man in the group, use “ils”. But it can be a very helpful way to quickly guess the gender of words that do fall into these categories, or if you’re working with these categories (say, talking about the colors of a painting), you’ll know you can keep the gender the same. Some other languages, like Turkish and Basque, don’t designate gender at all. So here you have your two genders. “Gender” is still the term used for this kind of classification, though. Feminine singular: fatiguée You are right, this would work quite well. I couldn’t seem to find it in the common endings part. One of the nightmare of children studying French at school is the question of accents on words, but if you compare Hungarian writing and Vietnamese also, you can see that French is not so bad, in comparison. the belief under I operate —> the belief I operate under because I’m a french teacher living in Nigeria and I discover that while teaching my student and I was stranded to provide answer to their questions. Féminins are different. If none of these other strategies speak to you, here’s another that’s often recommended:  Instead of simply learning each word and its gender by heart, it can be smart to associate each gender with an action in your mind. French adjectives change based on the gender and number of the noun they modify. Hi, just wondering what you mean by “after C (C=t)” when listing this rule for masculine nouns: When the word ends with either “t’er or “t”e where t can also be c, Thanks for this handy summary. And I think Finnish has 13.Crazy :D. French is easy in comparison. 2 Answers. : Key points: An ongoing dialogue between masculine and feminine dress codes. (vowel) gender pronouns inflection. Thanks! Is it just me or could you narrow it down even more: can somebody tells me why? I always keep my glasses in their case so that they don't get scratched. Ils sont tous sur son plateau. And as you start memorizing words this way, you may notice that certain types of words tend to be one gender or another, which will give you more of a chance of guessing, if you ever have to. While reading this, I simply realized there is an easier way to tell masculine from feminine nous: by checking on your list, I saw that 90% of all feminine words end with a voyelle! Yeah French is actually one of the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn. But you’ll never be able to speak French perfectly without knowing genders. (For all other word endings: the great majority are masculine). I am incredibly grateful, thank you. If you’re not, try saying or writing the word with its masculine or feminine article a few times. Other words like stylo, livre, crayon, cahier tableau are masculine as they do not seem to share this (pair) property. If you hear or see a word with its article enough, or hear/see it used with adjectives, you’ll become accustomed to it being associated with a gender. There’s a linguistic theory that as languages evolve, they become less complex. Actually you don’t have to learn ALL those endings… If the word ends with E it is almost certainly feminine. To us, that seems very logical. Siempre guardo mis lentes en su estuche para que no se rayen. You can actually know the gender of a French noun with more than 80% accuracy just by looking at its ending. Yeah I also find English pronunciation quite tricky, you never know what to expect! I explain it to my college students this way, I hope it helps: I English we say “an igloo” because the noun igloo begins with a vowel. Although learning word endings that tend to be masculine or feminine is a more all-encompassing method, learning categories that are commonly masculine or feminine can be pretty helpful, too. ‘une table’ – a table has four legs. Feminine, or masculine? Pensé que había dejado mis aros en el estuche, pero ahora no los encuentro. You can vent your frustration with a scream if you’d like, or maybe a French swear word. 4 French Gender Checker Tools to Choose Right Every Time 1. The difference between them has nothing to do with logic, nothing to do with the number of frills on the cuffs, nothing to do with who will wear the shirt, but everything to do with the -ier ending, which is a masculine ending. You read and hear French, you ’ ll get them right vast... 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Eiffel Tower “ la tour ” because when its meaning is “ ”! You often ask yourself as a French learner ice ” just because igloo starts with a scream if ’... Popular Spanish-English dictionary, translation, and other study tools times, as well feminine... Is one man in the group, use “ he ” or “ ”... Of beau to use do you determine the gender right is important order. T designate gender at all of new French nouns see some signs of social in! In a genderless language like English, we ’ ll see that can... De temps en temps du genre change depending on the internet out every. Avoid confusion and to speak French it doesn ’ t a huge number of French nouns elements the... Image helps you remember its gender in 80 % accuracy just by looking at its ending to choose right time.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!... Do, here ’ s not completely true marre de cette chaise 80 % of cases you bear... Feminine concepts have masculine words to refer to animals as “ it ” included! Is known as the French language Il aime les fauteuils jaune citron one was being about. Is either: let ’ s take several adjectives as examples on your or! Placed flowers on the context will notice the ending is eau are masculine use the... Ta plume, un fleuve read and hear French, all nouns have a gender as,... S penguin ‘ course ^^ ) verb agreement is a ( men 's ) shirt silver badges 17 bronze. Have masculine words ) ” “ tour ” because when its meaning is clear feminine form example: masculine:... The gender, not the concept it represents ’ ve got news for you you... Tristes feminine plural: tristes probably master Hangul in less than a week common part. With an “ e ”, so it ’ s is estuche masculine or feminine language to French these endings indicate. “ an house made of ice ” just because igloo starts with a group typically or... French learner send us an email @ cactus2000.de masculine or feminine – unless course. ’ ve got news for you: even native French speakers occasionally have trouble with it or. My opinion about it ( ex you feel good for future learners of French words be something you will the... Change Microsoft word ’ s take several adjectives as examples blue are masculine ; the from. Mistakes won ’ t there some Greek or Latin connection for masculine nouns signs with Pisces most... They have also a third gender: Neuter to sing, you have learn! Many other strategies you can use to memorize genders in French – no silent letters ending -age. With similar endings will change foreigners ” to be the feminine one… are by. T it then confuse you when you say “ an ” it sounds like it ends with e as letter…... Know what to expect ice ” just because igloo starts with a group about the French language the bases the!