Language/French/Grammar/How-to-Guess-the-Gender-of-French-Nouns
How to Guess the Gender of French Nouns
You often ask yourself as a French learner which nouns are feminine or masculine.
Gender of nouns do not have to be learnt by heart.
French genders are important
You can’t master French if you don’t know French genders. Luckily, the use of French genders is pretty simple, even if your language doesn’t use genders for nouns.
Firstly, you need to know that the gender has an influence on: - The article used before a noun - Pronouns - The ending of adjectives and verbs
Articles
In French, you have a masculine article ("le") and a feminine article ("la") :
La voiture = The car Le chien = The dog
Similarly, you have a masculine "un" and a feminine "une".
Une maison = A house Un avion = A plane
You also need to make the difference between “du” (masculine) and “de la” (feminine) :
De la farine = Some flour Du pain = Some bread
Pronouns
Pronouns change depending on the subject’s gender.
Il = He Elle = She
They are two ways to say “they”.
Elles (feminine subject) = They Ils (masculine subject) = They
Adjectives
French adjectives change based on the gender and number of the noun they modify.
Here are several adjectives as examples:
Grand (tall)
Masculine singular: grand Feminine singular: grande Masculine plural: grands Feminine plural: grandes
There are exceptions, but if you know these patterns, you’ll know how most adjectives change based on the gender of the noun.
Verbs
The passé "composé tense" is the best example of the influence of genders on conjugation.
Je suis allé (I am a boy) Je suis allée (I am a girl)
Il est allé Elle est allée
Nous sommes allés (There are boys in our group) Nous sommes allées (We are only girls)
Ils sont allés Elles sont allées
Associate each gender with an image
It can be smart to associate each gender with an action in your brain.
The association needs to be personal, this must be something you will easily remember. For example, If you love colors, you could imagine each word with a different color depending on its gender.
Guess the gender based on the word’s ending
Very often, a noun’s ending indicates its gender in the majority of cases.
Write these endings in your notebook, don't learn them by heart as it would be boring.
After a while, you will see that you can easily guess the gender of a noun.
Feminine noun endings
The majority of words that end in "e" or "ion" except words ending in "age", "ege", "é", or "isme"
Masculine noun endings
Most words with other endings are masculine.
What about you? How do you guess the gender of new nouns? Please share your comments or directely edit this article!