The majority of words that end in -e or -ion. I put ma because it ended in a vowel It would be awesome if you could come back in a few months and tell us if this rule works :). A noun is a word referring to a person, animal, place, thing, feeling or idea (e.g. I was used to spend time with a Japanese friend and he explained me some issue about his language, he said also the way his father was used to speak was comprehensible to him up to 80% because his father (and his generation) have a slight different construction of the phrase compared to that of my friend’s generation. This sounds like a great strategy. masculine. “La tour” because when its meaning is “tower” “tour” is feminine. Finally, while you say “some”, as in “a portion/piece of”, you need to make the distinction between du (masculine) and de la (feminine) in French. As it happens, it ends with an “e”, so it’s feminine then? He said also that women and men know and use (I don’t know how many on the overall language) different words for the same things, this feature reflects the fact of an, old, difference of power between couple’s members. Ecole is a feminine word, yet you say: Hi This Really Helped Me And I Had A Test And I Scored Highest In Class! I always keep my glasses in their case so that they don't get scratched. I am incredibly grateful, thank you. You can also learn the ending of each word individually of course but I find that learning these masculine and feminine endings helps a lot. What makes Hungarian writing an eyesore is that there are several compound letters and accentuation marks, which are needed express all 44(!) In theory at least, because if there are 20 women and one man, people often use the feminine form. Of course! el estuche. As you can see, even though most of the people here are female, just one male means you have to use the pronoun ils when you talk about the group. “Abandonné” is different, because it’s an adjective. Elle n’est vraiment pas confortable. Most of the animals, I need to know if cereal is masculine or feminine so I can state my opinion about it (ex. You could probably master hangul in less than a week. – wild And I actually find it hard to refer to animals as “it” as a Frenchman. For example, the word voile in French can either mean a sail or a veil. No matter how you feel about gender equality, that has to make you feel good for future learners of French! multi-word colours Example: Il aime les fauteuils jaune citron. I saw into a youtube vid that scandinavian languages have also a third gender, the neutral nouns. On the other hand, it is at least consistent – a letter always signifies the same sound. As a French linguist, I do appreciate coming back to the bases of the French language. If there’s only one thing you take away from this article, it should be that the majority of words ending in -e or -ion are feminine while words with other endings are mostly masculine. According to Wikipedia, genders are derived from Proto-Indo-European languages. Other nouns follow this pattern. The gender of an inanimate object sounds like an impossibility to an English speaker but as is the case in the English “an igloo” vs “a house made of ice” it is not about the object but about the word chosen for that object. I couldn’t seem to find it in the common endings part. (the word can mean room or coin, in both cases, it's still feminine):) 0 0. This being said, there are some feminists and activists who think that feminizing a profession is sexist unto itself and that all professions in French should simply be a single word, not two separate, male and female versions. 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). masculine. She has taught English and French for more than ten years, most notably as an assistante de langue vivante for L'Education Nationale. Musée , lycée etc think museum lyceum …suggests masculine? In Hungarian, you spell everything just the way you hear it (phonetic writing) – no silent letters. 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). I take french and I am studying for a midterm. (For all other word endings: the great majority are masculine). For instance, look at how countries in French use different prepositions depending on their gender. Le chemisier (masculine) is a (women's) blouse. Relevance. 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? -œur: la sœur, la mœur (but le cœur); I made a wrong example, writing in English instead of French language, but still I think it shows the meaning that I wanted explain. The same would be true for “école” for example. Exceptions (usually): words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme. 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. I know this is beside the point but I find people that “sound like foreigners” to be very charming! Ils vont au cinéma chaque semaine. Two genders: masculine and feminine. You learn french vocabulary if you want to know the gender of nouns in french. Féminins are different. French also has masculine and feminine articles; le, les, and un are the masculine articles, while la, les, and une are the feminine ones. You can vent your frustration with a scream if you’d like, or maybe a French swear word. French nouns and adjectives are gendered – but it doesn’t follow any sense or logic. You use the masculine form if there is at least one man in the group. Another bit of good news: As with les, the plural form of “a” in French, des, stays the same whether you’re using it with masculine or feminine nouns. Il/elle est allé(e) When it comes to learning genders in French, I feel like I’m living proof of what the McGill study found. So, yes, this does all mean that French noun genders are completely arbitrary in many cases. In spoken “legume” you’ll know it ends with an “e” because without the “e” you won’t be pronouncing the “m” at all. So it is NOT the object itself that is masculine or feminine…. 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