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.
In general, if we are talking about a noun, the general rules can be summarized in this table, but you’re right that there are exception:
Again, there are exceptions, some are pretty obvious, for instance, “homme” (man) and “prince ” (prince) are clearly masculine regardless of these rules.
Also, some adjective have different endings based on gender.
These are just general rules. There are many exceptions when it comes to gender and plural rules in French.
Memorisation. I heard Jody Foster being interviewed by French TV, perfect native level accent and grammar, but I noticed at least one noun gender error.
Gender is not that hard, the hard part for me is remembering the preposition or lack thereof in compound nouns, such as le stand de tir, le film Ă suspense, le film de science-fiction, la trousse de secours, la tringle Ă rideaux and so on,
Honestly, I just wanna say that I struggled to believe in Steve’s philosophy à propos French and LingQ because it felt so foreign in the beginning. Everything looked the same but using it was so different and bizarre.
However I wanna say I waited until I had gotten such a high vocabulary in French that I could speak with nearly anyone from my university professor to barber in French until I started conscious grammar practice. In all honesty, I have used nothing except LingQ to reach that level alone. I think reading, if you do it consistently and with great focus can get you to a strong B2.
That said, I still struggle a lot with gender but mainly prepositions now. Beyond that, just through LingQ alone I’ve ironed out most of my deficits, I’ve also spoken a great deal of French haphazardly with people in my day to day and improved significantly with nothing but LingQ and real life luck.
For grammar, what really helped me was Ouino. The lifetime option is a bargain, and I think LingQ should be used exclusively with it. After having read that much and listened that much to French on LingQ I began to use the app, and got some conscious exercises to iron out my mistakes, I must be honest. I think that’s the ideal for me at least. I’m in no rush to speak French. Now that I know everything I hear and read, only needing to focus on the grammar which I also have a great deal of intuition from merely because I have seen the language so much has greatly improved my skill.
I heard a criticism recently of Kaufmann that says he speaks every language after his 5th strongest one as a heritage speaker, but honestly I don’t view that as an impeachment of his skills. He just doesn’t prioritize speaking them that flawlessly. Conscious grammar exercise, especially writing with subsequent corrections helps you, but I think it’s only truly effective towards the end of your language journey. For me I barely even studied gender, and I feel like it’s no longer at all a priority for me. Why? Because I had already seen so many examples that reading French now, it just kinda feels natural that words should sound and look like they do when they do.
It also closely mirrors my experience with Swedish, my native language, I didn’t realize Swedish was gendered till last year. Because honestly our genders don’t correspond to feminine and masculine, and I suck at grammar, but just like my intuition in Swedish tells me when I use the wrong word, so now it feels in French. In conclusion, if you wanna get good at gender, listen and read a lot, begin grammar exercises when you feel you know 80-90% of the words on your LingQ lessons.
Memorisation. I heard Jody Foster being interviewed by French TV, perfect native level accent and grammar, but I noticed at least one noun gender error.
And if it’s the interview that I’m thinking of, the interviewer blurted out a correction just after she made it. I’ve seen French adults correct kids like that, it’s probably second nature for them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAilFIbzgDg&t=168s
(Link goes directly to that paty of the interview)
Does the gender effect the meaning? In German some words change their meaning if you use them with a different gender.
Der See - Die See (the lake - the sea)
Der Bulle - Die Bulle (the bull - the charter)
etc…
That would be a valid reason to correct someone without beeing impolite imho.
No, she was much older and the TV set was much nicer. I hate it when the French correct me, it throws my train of thought. And it doesn’t usually work, sometimes learners know they have made a mistake, but correcting on the fly is not helpful. I learn better by hearing, the polite way to correct someone is to repeat the phrase, or part of it, with the correction, in a natural way, to demonstrate rather than admonish.
I also had the experience in Canada that they would correct correct French, the kind you hear on major TV and radio stations.
In French there are a few rare instances when it can, but mostly no. Misgendering nouns is just viewed as an error in writing and speech. It looks and sounds “wrong” to a native speaker.
Only a few words have a different meaning based on gender:
| Masculine | Meaning | Feminine | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| livre | book | livre | pound |
| mode | mode, way or method | mode | fashion |
| capitale | capital (money) | capitale | capital (city) |
| tour | tour | tour | tower |
| mémoire | report | mémoire | memory |
| poste | job | poste | post office |
| vase | vase | vase | mud |
Nous apprenons le genre des mots par la répétition, en France. Nous n’avons pas de règle. Il faut donc que tu lises beaucoup, que tu écoutes beaucoup.
N’ai pas peur de faire des erreurs, nous ne prêtons pas attention (we don’t care) à ce genre d’erreur.
Courage !
A minor correction, it is le capital and la capitale. They have the same pronunciation in the singular, but not in the plural, of course. French is blessed with homophony.
