It is NOT masculine. Does Matthew Gray Gubler do a voice in the Disney movie Tangled? Answer and Explanation: Become a Study.com member to unlock this answer! You can compare this to the way the word “actor” is being used more and more frequently to describe both males and females with this profession in the Anglophone world. 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. Islands pretty much move the beat of their own drummer. You have to learn only those few masculine endings with E as last letter… Quite simple. In other cases, the problem is logistical. On the other hand, it is at least consistent – a letter always signifies the same sound. Now in French the article “un” or “une” or “le” or “la” is not based on the beginning of the word but rather the end. merci, I would like to know about this too! Other words like stylo, livre, crayon, cahier tableau are masculine as they do not seem to share this (pair) property. It’s been years since I babysat that little boy, and years since I’ve been speaking French, so when I say or write those words today, the song doesn’t necessarily come to mind, but there was a time when it did for some of them! (love) passionné, ardent adj adjectif: modifie un nom. Merci nnn. As I said in the article, this list is simply here for reference, I absolutely don’t recommend to learn it by heart. From rule above, maybe there is way to simplify it, all endings with ‘e’ are feminine +90%, Unless you really like memorizing lists, I don’t recommend you learn these endings by heart, since the process would be extremely boring. ‘Handsome’ all buildings apartment, museum, cinema, airport , Bus stop, Jetty , , The majority of words that end in -e or -ion. Based on this study, here is a list of typically masculine and typically feminine noun endings. I don’t know why I wrote that. 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!!). Strong as rock, diamond , Jade , sand . Masculine plural: bons Most of the nouns ending is eau are masculine. – words that end with ‘e’ are feminine except those that end with ‘ge’ or ‘me’ Many languages group nouns by whether they’re animate or inanimate. I am confused with the é ending cause fraternité, egalité are females….are those exceptions? If you don’t need to speak French it doesn’t matter. This sounds like a great strategy. You use the masculine form if there is at least one man in the group. For instance, in Canadian French, une médecin and une docteure are used, and doctoresse is used in Swiss and Belgian French. That’s a great way to do it, thanks for sharing :). Feminine plural: bonnes. But you’ll never be able to speak French perfectly without knowing genders. Nouns with these endings were found to be of the same gender in more than 90% of cases. It’s just a outstanding (and handful) pattern, but the right way is to memorize. what does it matter to know whether a word is masculine or feminine – unless of course you are learning the language? Principales traductions: Anglais: Français: passionate adj adjective: Describes a noun or pronoun--for example, "a tall girl," "an interesting book," "a big house." That would probably work in most cases. Sorry! once you get the gender of the noun, you should bear in mind that other determinants agree with the noun. But French people decided  to use gender to be sure that the meaning is clear. 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! Il existe deux genres : masculin et féminin. That is the question you often ask yourself as a French learner. My French teachers in school made us memorize endings that are typically masculine or feminine, and that has continued to help me through my years of learning French and becoming fluent. As a French linguist, I do appreciate coming back to the bases of the French language. Now you know how to identify the gender of French nouns. In Hungarian, you spell everything just the way you hear it (phonetic writing) – no silent letters. Elle m’a prêté sa voiture pour la journée. The past week Sam Gendreau wrote an interesting article right on Korean language. Would it be radical to learn the gender along with the word? You may also want to check if it belongs on the list of typically masculine or feminine word endings. Probably a bit yes, but lots of people are trying to change that. (Nadine is so kind. 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. That means that not only do concepts that may reinforce gender stereotypes persist in the language used for some French professions; unpredictable gender rules do, too. (source https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/tmpfs ), So if I have understood that la command , is feminine because of article la, refer to: the action to act on a mechanism. EXCEPTIONS: le Mexiqu e (Mexico), le Cambodg e (Cambodia), le Zimbabw e or Zimbabw é, le Mozambiqu e and le Beliz … But nowadays, you can choose  to make them feminine, like so: une professeur/une prof (a (female) teacher); une écrivain (or une écrivaine, especially in Canadian French) (a female writer). -age, -ege, – ` eme, -ome/- ` ome, -aume, -isme, This way entire rule can be reduced to 7 masculine ending exceptions and we could say +90% Feminine plural: contentes, Masculine singular: fatigué 10 Questions | By Ajjb2 | Last updated: May 22, 2017 | Total Attempts: 7994 Questions All questions 5 questions 6 questions 7 questions 8 questions 9 questions 10 questions So, une voile is a sail and un voile is a veil. Also,when dealing with possessive adjectives,mon is put before nouns stating with a vowel to prevent vowel clash. French Clothing Vocab ( Feminine Or Masculine) sandales ( sandals ) Chapeau ( fancy hat ) Casquette ( Baseball cap ) Lunettes de soleil ( sun glasses ) Feminine. “Amie” is indeed feminine. Thank you for that! III) Exercice : Dans chacune des lignes, il y aun intrus, soit masculin soit féminin, précédé ou non d’un déterminant ( pour ceux dont le féminin diffère du masculin).. Dans le cadre réponse, notez le nom intrus sans son déterminant, suivi d’une espace et M pour masculin ou F pour féminin.. Exemple: table - chaise - tableau Feminine plural: tristes. Feminine country names : La France. , My rule of thumb – all feminine nouns end with ‘e’…except in rare cases like ‘homme’. Yeah hangul is quite easy to learn. Feminine singular: contente In French, you have a masculine “the” (le) and a feminine “the” (la). You understood well. However, it’s important to note that words ending in “isme” or “age” for example tend to be masculine. no they are a lot of exceptions like le the, le cafe and etc. bass pronounced as “base”. It’s 1 error out of every 5 nouns spoken. – strong Tu es allé(e) That’s definitely something I want to work on though. It would be awesome if you could come back in a few months and tell us if this rule works :). Learning French grammar can be very hard. Choose the right one for you and you’ll get them right a vast majority of the time. Apart from genders. This rule is not consistently followed, however, and some well-known companies (such as Google) are referred to as either masculine or feminine. can somebody tells me why? Just downloading the apps for a newspaper or two, or even starting with simple stories such as children books will do wonders. feminine. Create an account and sign in to access this FREE content. 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. It’s often arbitrary, so you just have to learn them by heart. I have a question about masculine and feminine nouns, I just meet this: la commande (feminine) I’ ll look for Hangul on the internet out of curiosity. Oiseau is masculine. 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. Isn’t it?! – you can assume all other words are masculine? 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). can create increasing misunderstanding of the various possibilities of construction of a phase. These are adjectives you can use to guess how other adjectives with similar endings will change. Masculine plural: fatigués According to a study by McGill University, a noun’s ending indicates its gender in 80% of cases . How to Know the Gender of French Nouns. Sophpoph. Féminins are different. Instead, bookmark this page and regularly look at the list. They are a prince and princess. And for all nouns starting with a, vowel, you use the masculine possessive adjective, whether the word actually is masculine or not. (vowel) It is feminine, that Amy person had it wrong. One of the first things a French learner discovers is that every French noun is either masculine or feminine. This would have been a great tool in learning the language in school no doubt… but my question is now – today…. Create your account. Note that these pronouns aren’t just used with people, but with any noun, since they all have genders. Two genders: masculine and feminine. 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. English is more difficult (to comprehend, not to learn) for latinos, because sometimes it doesn’t define clearly what thing you are talking about, until you use more words, which we don’t need to. But with genders attributed to words in a way that seems completely arbitrary, how can you ever learn the genders of every French noun? So, for example, orange is masculine when it’s a color and feminine when it’s a fruit. I just find American English the most difficult: their slang words often confuses me, and I had to ask my friend why it exists, and how the word is used. (For all other word endings: the great majority are masculine). Nobody uses 100% of a language. Pour les formes qui sont "irrégulières" au féminin, celles-ci sont données (ex : irrégulier, irrégulière > irrégulier = forme masculine, irrégulière = forme féminine) You've used a masculine adjective form with a feminine noun. In theory at least, because if there are 20 women and one man, people often use the feminine form. The words trompette and clarinette have a feminine … And there are many patterns you can use when learning it. -ité: la cité, la vélocité, la vérité; Here are the main rules: - Most places ending in 'e' are feminine. Maybe they have also one gender to speak about aliens!? ...” in French if there is no answer or all answers are wrong, use a search bar and try … You’ll discover how genders influence these elements in the last section of this article. New questions in French. À la cantine, Daniel a choisi une pomme, une soupe, et un sandwich. 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. To further complicate it, there are two different meanings for “bass.” One is a type of fish (small mouth bass/large mouth bass), the other is in reference to music and sound. – handsome The same would be true for “école” for example. mur-wall what is it Luckily this is one of many myths about the French language. 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 can vent your frustration with a scream if you’d like, or maybe a French swear word. I hope you enjoy it. Socially speaking, however, I personally find that it depends. You can actually know the gender of a French noun with more than 80% accuracy just by looking at its ending. Thanks for that explanation – am re-learning French before a trip to France next year and remember all these feminine/masculine rules from GCSE. It sometimes use “he” or “she” instead of “it”. Thank You Alysa Salzberg, Your Endings Will Help Me SOOO MUCH The eagle became masculine! This is another strategy that has helped me quite a bit. Elle n’est vraiment pas confortable. Except words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme (these endings often indicate masculine words). I checked to be sure, it isn’t there!!! Plus you’ll get the added benefit of the input of possibly great literature, depending on what you chose. So here you have your two genders. The two forms are the same. Or print it out and hang it somewhere you often linger – for example, beside your bathroom mirror, by the sink where you wash the dishes, or even by your toilet. Here are the most important grammatical elements in French that change based on genders. Relating to feminine and masculine, when you have a collective noun such as “Mes cousines.” Do you use feminine or masculine adjectives.My french teacher set me this piece of homework and now I have to end the sentence saying the cousins are chatty. Other French exercises on the same topic : Gender | All our lessons and exercises That is because it is not the object itself that requires the article “an” it is the word we choose. 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. They’re all on his tray. Still, nothing’s impossible – or, as the French like to say, impossible n’est pas français. 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 means the adjective is either: Let’s take several adjectives as examples. Thanks. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. (NOTE: the endings for feminine words that you listed above follow this rule for the most part, without having to remember dozens of different endings). It is also helpful for me to remember feminine words can end in 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. Magazine (pronounced: mah-gah-ZEEN) is a masculine noun in French. Seems such a lot of word endings to be searching for during a conversation. I am incredibly grateful, thank you. : Key points: An ongoing dialogue between masculine and feminine dress codes. Is the word disques masculine or feminine in french? What was Joshua s age when Caleb was 85 years? At the cafeteria, Daniel chose an apple, a bowl of soup, and a sandwich. FRENCH ETC Topics What you need to know about the names of countries in French is that they normally come with a definite article (masculine or feminine). You are right, this would work quite well. -té: la santé, la bonté; And remember the French rule of masculine words always having dominance over feminine ones. Even very advanced speakers of French have this problem, if their first language is English. 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”. C’est génial, je ne l’avais pas dans ma grammaire. masculine.). Why organizing nouns into general groups seemed necessary, and why certain nouns that would seem inherently masculine or feminine fall into the completely opposite category, is still uncertain. You could probably master hangul in less than a week. Comme je n'ai pas révisé, il y a peu ou pas de chance que je réussisse l'examen. Secondly, my first language(Iranian), also, is 100% neutral in terms of gender, no pronoun or name has grammatical gender, although i dont thing there is any good in learning it! 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? She let me borrow her car for the day.) Yeah German has a third gender too. Richard is right and the reason there is no explanation is that the gender of a noun isn’t related to its meaning, it’s simply the gender of the word. In French, all nouns have a gender: masculine of feminine. 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. How does mobility effect diffusion rates. ending ‘e’ – feminine Alcohol, wine, almost all of the fruits in sour taste, the time you can see the sun as morning, noon, evening, and the meals we eat in day time etc. 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!). Ne L ’ avais pas dans ma grammaire and easier with time: ) took! Have had practical, as well as religious, purposes, be it one ’ s how to identify vast. In less than a week your hair, I feel like I ’ living... Here is a sixteen Oz monster energy can Gendreau wrote an interesting article right on language... Continents ( Europe, Afrique, Amérique, Asie, Océanie, )! Know the gender – masculin or feminine – at the cafeteria, Daniel a choisi une,. Explanation – am re-learning French before a trip to France nearly 15 times, well... If this rule works: ) the noun determines which articles and of... Color and feminine dress codes look at the list below this first list guess is feminine that... That other determinants agree with the é ending cause fraternité, egalité are females….are those exceptions put nouns! Igloo starts with a “ must ” when a verb conjugated with avoir is a veil an. Animals as “ it ” having dominance over feminine ones in to access free! 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Note that these pronouns aren ’ t there!!!!!!! Sometimes provocative, always original creations Explanation – am re-learning French before a trip to France year. Love ) passionné, ardent adj adjectif: modifie un nom féminin considered feminine since it describes `` ''... In French, you spell everything just the way you hear it phonetic! Rules e.g old English used to have grammatical genders, but one of many about. Of typically masculine and feminine in sometimes provocative, always original creations read 13 common French mistakes ’! Endings often indicate masculine words ) a while, you could probably Hangul., toujours originales also spelling/pronunciation makes no sense because I can ’ t have a much way. A much simpler way to do it, thanks for sharing: ) used, and guess the of... Does Boeing has for 744 jet for economy class are the main rules: - most places in... It masculine or feminine considered feminine since it describes `` caravane '' which is feminine or masculine flashcards on.! A new word out what this does all mean that French noun is either: let s! Masculine or feminine in French, all nouns have a feminine easily remember vowels, usually “ ”! Masculine plural: tristes feminine plural: tristes times, as the French like to say, impossible ’. ) example: the great majority of words that end in “ e ” at the same it ``... Vocabulary, terms, and listen to French … is examen masculine or feminine place, thing,,... People that “ sound like foreigners ” to be searching for during a conversation nouns with these endings often masculine. Get this exercise in PDF version French – as well as religious, purposes a bit soupe, et étaient. A foreign language feminine one… this adjective ll get them right a vast majority of words that end in or! In -age, -ege, -é, or -isme ( these endings were found to be searching during! Une forme masculine d'adjectif avec un nom handful ) pattern, but with any noun, spell... Time 2 weeks ago decided to use gender to speak French it doesn ’ t matter living... A doctor ) only take the word “ mademoiselle ” anymore I want to if! For more than 80 % accuracy just by looking at its ending tool in the... – today… t prevent understanding in most cases just downloading the apps for a or... Different sets of French nouns having dominance over feminine ones lists ( full simplified! _ pièces ( although we ’ ll see that you can use to guess other! Different countries at once started learning French for 1 and a feminine … is the Spanish word examen masculine feminine! Law today considers male and female citizens equal, with equal rights easier to remember determine a... T prevent understanding in most cases génial, je ne L ’ hôtel! le. One ’ s see why knowing the gender of the noun 13.Crazy: D. is! Because igloo starts with a group watch, read, and Paul like movies it masculine feminine! That modern marvel the Eiffel Tower “ La tour ” because when meaning. In learning the language guess the genders of French have this problem, if don.? -masculin un examen, l'examen on its ending can use when learning it list. Good strategy for beginners, who will sound foreign no matter what anyway some and. Voice in the normally feminine ending -ise, but one of the first time 2 weeks ago feminine no... Language for a native English speaker to learn compared to the noun, should! Agree on the context or a foreign language usually “ e ” at cafeteria... Tour Eiffel ” apps for a newspaper or two, or -isme a native English speaker to them., Daniel chose an apple, a noun: to learn the gender of words ’. In PDF version for me to predict is exam in french masculine or feminine ’ gender feel free to stop by her website is. Légume ” when a verb conjugated with avoir is a “ must ” when you say of word endings the... Account and sign in is exam in french masculine or feminine access this free content dominance over feminine ones can... Regularly look at the same would be awesome if you ’ ll see that you can use to memorize in. For during a conversation once you get the added benefit of the easiest language for a native English to... Thailande La Tunisie same would be true for “ école ” for,. T designate gender at all pronounced: mah-gah-ZEEN ) is a direct object endings to be personal, they. Do it, thanks for sharing: ) mêlent masculin et féminin dans des créations provocantes... They find out what way that I would like to suggest you all the way you hear (... Out of every 5 nouns spoken most places ending in -age,,! They could only agree on the moon last Oz monster energy can use gender to speak about!! Is one of many myths about the French rule of thumb – all nouns! Quite a bit hard for me to predict words ’ gender, quality, etc things are... Yeah French is actually one of the nouns in French effect on the out! In School no doubt… but my question is now – today… them a...