Language/French/Grammar/Gender-of-countries,-towns,-islands,-rivers,-regions-and-states

Gender of countries, towns, islands, rivers, regions and states

Nouns in French are either masculine or feminine. Unfortunately, there is no easy rules for predicting the gender of a noun. However, it is not necessary to learn all genders by heart as there are certain models that can be used to predict the genre with varying degrees of accuracy. Be careful to remember that there are always exceptions to these models.

After mastering this lesson, these related pages might interest you: Possessive determiners, Omission of the article, Superlative forms of adjectives & Use of en with numerals and quantifiers.

Countries

General Rule

Some countries are masculine, others feminine. The general rule is that a country's name is masculine unless it ends in -e, in which case the name is feminine:

French	English
le Canada	Canada
le Danemark	Denmark
le Koweït	Kuwait
le Japon	Japan
le Liban	Lebanon
la Chine	China
le Maroc	Morocco
la Finlande	Finland
la Norvège	Norway
la Libye	Libya
la Mauritanie	Mauritania
le Nigeria	Nigeria
la Roumanie	Romania
le Portugal	Portugal
la Suisse	Switzerland
la Syrie	Syria

• Note: Les Etats-Unis (masculine-plural).

Exceptions

As we mentioned earlier, there are always a few exceptions to the general rule:

• le Cambodge (Cambodia),
• le Mexique (Mexico),
• le Mozambique (Mozambique),
• le Zaïre (Zaire),
• le Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe).

"en" or "au(x)"

'To' or 'in' a country is either "en" or "au(x)":

• "en" is used with countries of feminine gender, and countries of masculine gender beginning with a vowel,
• "au" is used with countries of masculine gender beginning with a consonant, and
• "aux" with those countries whose names are plural, whether masculine or feminine:

Examples

• en Chine
• au Canada
• au Japon
• aux Etats-Unis
• en Norvège
• en Iran (masculine)
• en Israël (masculine)
• en Suisse

Towns

Towns, in normal usage, are masculine. In formal written French they are sometimes feminine, particularly those which end in -e:

• Cambridge est plein(e) de touristes en été

Cambridge is full of tourists in summer Where the name of a town includes a definite article, adjectives and participles must agree with the gender of the article:

• La Baule est située sur le littoral atlantique

La Baule is on the Atlantic coast

• Le Touquet est désert l'hiver

Le Touquet is deserted in winter

Islands

Islands are usually feminine:

• la Sardaigne Sardinia
• la Crète Crete
• la Nouvelle-Zélande New Zealand

But le Groenland 'Greenland' is an exception.

Rivers, regions and states

For rivers, French départements, French regions, for states and regions in other countries, the best generalization is that if they end in -e they are feminine:

Rivers

• le Rhin the Rhine
• le Tarn the Tarn
• le Cher the Cher

• la Sâone the Sâone
• la Seine the Seine
• la Tamise the Thames

Exceptions

• le Rhône 'the Rhône'.

Départements

• le Calvados la Haute-Garonne
• le Gers la Marne
• le Jura la Vendée

Exceptions

• le Finistère.

French regions

• le Berry la Normandie
• le Limousin la Bretagne
• le Périgord la Champagne

States and regions in other countries

For example, American states:

• le Massachusetts la Louisiane
• le Nevada la Californie
• le Texas la Floride

Exceptions

British counties appear mostly to be treated as masculine, even those ending in '-shire':

• le Kent
• le Perthshire
• le Yorkshire

Gender of Nouns (all lessons)

Table of Contents

• General Lesson: How to Guess the Gender of French Nouns
• Gender signalled by the final letters of the written forms of nouns
• Nouns which refer both to males and to females
• Nouns which change form when they refer to males or to Females
• Nouns which change meaning when they change gender
• Nouns which have the same spoken form but two different written forms, with different genders and different meanings
• Gender of countries, towns, islands, rivers, regions and states
• Gender of makes of vehicle and machines
• Names of ships and restaurants
• Nouns which are only masculine or only feminine, but can refer both to men and women
• Nouns with genders which English speakers often get wrong
• Gender of compound nouns

Other Chapters

Table of Contents

Nouns

• Types
• Gender
• Plural

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Determiners

• Articles
• Typical use of the definite article
• Typical use of the indefinite article
• The partitive article: du, de l', de la, des
• Use of indefinite and partitive articles after the negative forms ne... pas, ne... jamais, ne... plus, ne... guère
• Omission of the article
• Demonstrative determiners
• Possessive determiners

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Personal and impersonal pronouns

• Subject pronouns
• Object pronouns
• Stressed pronouns
• Demonstrative pronouns
• Possessive pronouns

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Adjectives

• Adjectives modifying the noun
• Adjectives which follow verbs or verbal expressions
• Adjectives with complements
• Indefinite and negative noun phrases with adjective complements
• Adjectives used as nouns
• Adjectives used as adverbs
• Masculine and feminine forms of adjectives
• Plural forms of adjectives
• Adjective agreement with nouns
• Invariable adjectives
• Compound adjectives
• Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives
• Subjunctive versus indicative in clauses dependent on a superlative adjective
• Absolute use of the superlative

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Adverbs

• Function of adverbs
• Formation of adverbs with the ending -ment
• Adjectives used as adverbs without addition of -ment
• Phrases used as adverbs
• English and French adverb formation
• Types of adverbs
• Location of adverbs

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Numbers, measurements, time and quantifiers

• Cardinal numbers
• Ordinal numbers
• Fractions
• Some differences in the use of cardinal and ordinal numbers in French and English
• Measurements and comparisons
• Dates, days, years
• Clock time
• Money
• Quantifiers

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Verb forms

• Conjugations
• Easy ways of generating some parts of the paradigms
• Changes in the stem form of some -er conjugation verbs
• Verbs whose stems end in c- or g-
• Verb paradigms

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Verb constructions

• Relations between verbs and their complements
• Intransitive constructions
• Directly transitive verbs
• Indirectly transitive verbs
• Ditransitive verbs
• The passive
• Pronominal verbs
• Impersonal verbs
• Verbs which take noun + adjective or noun + noun complements

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Verb and participle agreement

• Subject-verb agreement
• Agreement of the past participle with the subject of être
• Agreement of the past participle of verbs conjugated with avoir with a preceding direct object
• Agreement of the past participle of pronominal verbs in compound tenses

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Tense

• The present
• The past
• The future
• Other tenses indicating the time at which events occur relative to other events
• Combining tenses
• Tenses in direct and reported descriptions of events
• Tenses with si

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The subjunctive, modal verbs, exclamatives and imperatives

• The attitude of the subject to events: the subjunctive
• The use of devoir, pouvoir, savoir, falloir
• The French equivalents of the English modal verbs: 'would', 'should', 'could', 'may', 'might', 'ought to', and 'must'
• Exclamatives
• Imperatives

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The infinitive

• Introduction: what are infinitives?
• Infinitives as complements to other verbs
• Verbs which take infinitive complements without a linking preposition
• Verbs which take infinitive complements preceded by the preposition à
• Verbs which take an infinitive complement preceded by de
• Omission of objects before infinitives
• Infinitives as complements to adjectives
• Infinitives as complements to nouns
• Infinitives in subordinate clauses
• Infinitives as polite commands
• Quick-reference index to verbs taking infinitive complements

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Prepositions

• Introduction
• Prepositions listed alphabetically from à to vers
• French translations for common English prepositions

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Question formation

• Introduction
• Yes/no questions
• Information questions
• Order of object pronouns in questions involving inversion
• Order of negative particles in questions involving inversion
• Use of question words and phrases: qui?, que?, quoi?, quel?, de qui?, avec combien de? etc.
• Indirect questions

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Relative clauses

• Introduction
• Use of relative qui
• Use of relative que
• Preposition plus qui
• Use of lequel in relative clauses
• Use of dont, de qui, duquel/de laquelle/desquels/desquelles
• The use of où as a relative pronoun
• Use of relative quoi
• Free relative clauses and the use of ce qui, ce que, ce dont, ce à quoi, ce sur quoi, etc.
• Translating 'whoever', 'whatever', 'wherever', 'whenever', 'however'
• Indicative and subjunctive in relative clauses

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Negation

• Introduction
• Location of sentence negators
• Order of negators in multiple negation
• Omission of ne in sentence negation
• Order of negative elements in questions and imperatives
• ne... pas
• ne... que
• ne... aucun(e), ne... nul(le)
• ne... jamais
• ne... plus
• ne... guère
• ne... rien
• ne... personne
• ne... ni... ni
• sans used with other negators
• ne used alone

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Conjunctions and other linking constructions

• Introduction
• Coordinating conjunctions
• Subordinating conjunctions
• Conjunctions sometimes confused by English speakers
• Repeated subordinating conjunctions
• Subordinating conjunctions used with infinitive clauses
• après avoir/ être + past participle linking an infinitive clause to a main clause
• Past participle phrases used as linkers
• Present participles and gerunds

Other Lessons

• Homophones
• Collective nouns
• Omission of the article with nouns in apposition
• Easy way of generating the imperfect tense
• Typical use of the indefinite article
• Adverbs ending in —amment and —eminent derived from adjectives ending in —ant or —ent
• Use of y
• Plural indefinite article "des" VS preposition "de" and definite article "les"
• tard versus en retard
• Gender
• The indirect object complement
• Nouns
• Easy way of generating the imperfect subjunctive
• Pronominal Verbs Agreement
• Prepositions