How do I know when a French word is masculine or feminine?
- carolinejestaz
- 47 minutes ago
- 1 min read
Rules tell us that words with certain endings are in general masculine or in general feminine, not that all these words always are, i.e. there are lots of exceptions.
More importantly, the gender allocation of a noun does not follow the logic of said noun, as 'une moustache' and 'une barbe' show. A blouse is masculine ('un chemisier') and the shirt for men is feminine ('une chemise'), etc.
Coming from a non-gendered language like English, gender is the most visible part of the iceberg, the language point all students understandably focus on to begin with, but as I always tell them, that is not a good use of their time or efforts.
Learning a language does not mean learning one word after the other. If it did, I would not teach nor learn any!
Instead what you learn, what I teach my students at any level, is the logic of the language, which helps them construct sound sentences, interact with the language confidently, all the while understanding what the process is.
So what are you waiting for?
