Guys, how do you memorize the gender of french nouns? I doubt that reading texts (repetitions) in French alone can help with this. Or am I wrong?
Please share your experience. Thx!
P.S. I know of a list of noun endings that could theoretically help define their gender.
My rule of thumb is nouns ending -e or -ion are feminine. All others are masculine.
Of course, there are exceptions. When I learn new nouns, I write them down in a notebook with M or F for gender. If the noun violates my gender rule, I circle the gender letter.
In my experience, only 2-3% of French nouns are exceptions. (I don’t claim any authority on that number.)
I never remember the genders of anything. Fortunately French people always seem to understand me when I misgender nouns.
I realize you’ve said you know the list of endings, but maybe this will come in handy for others who come here. As with German, there are a few guidelines that can help people remember, but it’s not completely reliable - as in every language, there are exceptions:
Feminine words
Words ending in -e tend to be feminine (voiture, table, pensée , lune, philosophie, chaise, rue, la pluie, vitre, chaussure, nature, portière, porte, armoire, fenêtre).
Words ending in -ère are feminine: Théière, cafetière, garçonnière, cannonière, étagère, etc.
Masculine Words
Words not ending in -e and describing material objects tend to be masculine - mur, parquet, bateau, stylo, toit, etc.
Words ending in -ier, are masculine: pommier, poirier, cacaoyer, abricotier, oranger, etc.
-ment words are masculine. Apitoiement, saignement, grognement, amusement, croisement, parlement, éternuement…
-euil words are masculine. fauteuil, chevreuil, linceuil…
-eau words are masculine. Corbeau, morceau, fuseau, château, gâteau, etc.
-isme words are masculine.
Renditions of old Greek words tend to be masculine (le système, le diadème…).
When in doubt…
When in doubt, remember this: 65.4% of French words are masculine and 34.6% feminine. So if you have no idea, if you go with the masculine, you’ll be right 2/3rds of the time.
Hope this helps.
I have no idea. I have never paid attention to it, and never had many problems, a part for a few words here and there. It seems to me that after a while most of the words become intuitive.
I wouldn’t say the same for the plural, for example, where sometimes I’m not sure at all (but it’s not a big deal for me anymore).
However, don’t ask me for German because I gave up. The fact is that I haven’t lived in German at all, compared to France for example. I believe that if you consume a lot of material in your target language, and live in the country, these types of problems become irrelevant because you subconsciously engrain the logic behind the language. At least for most of the vocabulary and sound.