Did you know all the living and non living things, objects, nouns and even countries have gender in french. On the contrary, this does not exist in English. English language therefore uses only one definite article “the” because the system of genders in nouns does not exist. However, French uses le for masculine nouns, la for feminine nouns and l’ before any singular noun or adjective beginning with a vowel sound.
Let us look some examples:
Masculine
Le village The village
Le gardin The garden
Feminine
La femme The girl
La voiture The car
Similarly, for any singular nouns beginning with a vowel or h for both masculine and feminine, we use l’,
Masculine
L’océan The ocean
L’acteur The actor
Feminine
L’école The school
L’autoroute The highway
Yes, it is normal that this brings complications for learners where they find it too much to handle. But don’t worry, I will help you with some of the techniques that you can use to understand masculine and feminine in French easily.
Firstly, to identify them we need to look certain structures in the words such as letter ending. They often indicate their gender by these patterns and structures but not 100% as there are exceptions. Now, let’s learn what these structures are:
For Masculine,
The nouns with ending in –ment, -age, -eau, -t, -al, eil, etc. are Masculine.
Le monument Monument
Le movement Movement
Le tableau Painting
Le Plateau Tray
Le personnage Personality
Le voyage Trip
Le chocolat Chocolate
Le journal Newspaper
Le conseil Advice
For Feminine,
Nouns ending in –ure, -ence, -ance, -sion, -té, -ette, etc. are generally feminine.
La nature Nature
La violence Violence
La finance Finance
La profession Profession
La realité Reality
La cigarette Cigarette
To conclude, If you’re struggling with understanding the gender in French, just remember some structures and the gender they implique, and you’ll have the answer easily.
Happy learning 🙂