French Gender Nouns For Beginners

In French nouns have a gender.

They can be either masculine or feminine. To an English speaker, this doesn’t quite make sense as we do not do this.

A noun is an object, person or place. We can understand a person having a gender. We understand ‘He’ and ‘She’ when referring to a person, but for anything else, it is usually ‘It’

In French, everything has gender and it can be confusing.

Every inanimate object has a gender and we need to know what it is to use the language properly.

Why Gender Nouns Are Important In French

In French the gender of a word can determine what happens to the words that come before and after it.

Basically in French sentences, everything needs to match, which is a little strange to English speakers.

When we use words like ‘A’ or ‘The’ in English (These are known as articles), they just mean what they mean. In French there is a masculine and feminine version of these and even one for the plural version.

So if you have a feminine word, you need to make sure you use the feminine ‘The’ or whatever article you are using for it to make sense. They all need to match.

The same is also true for adjectives and some verb tenses that can come after a noun. Each gender will have a different spelling for adjectives and also slightly different conjugation for the verbs.

Although this is really noticeable in written French, it can also affect the pronunciation of the words, so it is also important in spoken French.

This means you really need to know the gender of things to speak and write correctly in French.

Ways To Help Identify The Nouns Gender In French

Some nouns are going to be easy to work out the gender. If the thing we are talking about is alive, it will probably have both a male and female version to fit what we are talking about.

For example:  a waiter and a waitress ‘un serveur, une serveuse’

This we can understand as we have similar in English, but then it can get a little different for other living things, for example ‘un lapin’ is a male rabbit and ‘une lapine’ is the female.

In English we just have Rabbit, if we want to differentiate its gender we will add this extra detail. It’s not instantly obvious what gender we mean, unlike in French.  

As we can see the spelling is slightly different here for both versions of rabbit in French. We just need to remember that there can be a male and female version for basically anything living and we need to know it will be spelled slightly different. This can be seen quite a lot in job titles where there is often a male and female version in French.    

The real problem comes with inanimate objects. These will be either masculine or feminine and there is no way to really work it out.

If we take a baguette and we try and guess its gender. Maybe it’s masculine?  It’s a kind of phallic shape, so it must be male? …Nope, it’s female.

Do I know why? …Nope. All I know it is feminine and you need to just remember that.

It can also become really confusing with human body parts as they are often mixed. I am a man, so surely all my body parts should be masculine? …Nope!

The head is feminine and the arms are masculine. It’s just all very strange and really does seem like there is no logic at all at times.

An easy way to help you identify the gender is to look at the other words in the sentence. They are going to give you a clue to what the gender might be, as like I said above, they all need to match.  If you see masculine articles or masculine adjectives, then you know the noun is a masculine and the same goes for if they where all feminine words.

Common Endings To French Gender Nouns

If a word is on its own you obviously can’t look at the words around it, but you can look at how the word is spelt, especially its ending. 

This isn’t an exactly science, because there is always exceptions, but for the most part if you see words ending with the letters listed below, you can most of the time guess their gender correctly.

Feminine endings:

• -ée
• -ice
• -on
• -té
• -tion
• -ure

Masculine endings:

• -é
• -c
• -eau
• -ou
• -al
• -ment

You should still always check in a dictionary, the word should be marked with a (m) or (f) after it to tell you which gender it is.

How To Learn The Gender Of French Nouns?

The best way to avoid this whole situation is to just learn the words along with their genders. This is easier said than done. However, if you are learning a new word, try and learn it with the un/une or le/la before it.

I have found that just repetition of the word along with its article, over time; when reading, writing, speaking or listening will help it sink it.

I have no idea how many times I’ve said, read, written or heard the word “une pizza” but I know it’s now enough to never forget that it should be ‘une’.

I just know pizza is feminine now. In my English brain it hasn’t suddenly become feminine, but I just automatically know I need to say ‘une’ before it. I can’t really explain it, but repetition has now just made it normal for me say is this way.

So basically what I am saying is to just keep practicing, with time, you will master the genders of the words you know. If you come across a new word, use the above techniques to try and guess its gender, but with time, that word will also become normal to you after you use it many many times. 

What If You Mess Up and Say The Wrong Gender Of A Noun In French?

One of my biggest fears while learning French was getting this all wrong.

Which I think is a natural and acceptable fear, for an English speaker this whole concept is strange and it seems too difficult to remember what is what.

However, I have spoken to a lot of French people and I have asked them all about this. I’ve asked them “What happens if I get it wrong and say the wrong gender?” and the answer is always “don’t worry about it!”

Of course they will know it is wrong and it will sound strange to them, but they will totally understand what you are saying. A few of them have also admitted to me that they have made this mistake a few times themselves, so basically, do not worry too much about it.

It’s kind of like if someone was learning English and they said “My favourite actress is Brad Pitt” sounds weird, it’s obviously wrong …but still makes sense and you probably wouldn’t think twice about it. 

I am sure you will get a few people who laugh or smirk when you get it wrong, maybe they think you’re an idiot. Honestly, who cares, these people are always going to be like this, even if you are speaking perfectly, they will still find something wrong with how you talk, so just ignore them.

The vast majority of people will know you’re not native and will let this little mistake slide.

Conclusion

The gender of nouns is a strange concept and it can take a while to get your head around, especially when you have to start referring to random objects as he or she and using the verb conjugations in this way.

However, you will start to get use to it fairly quickly and the more you pay attention to it, the more you will notice it is a huge concept throughout the whole french language. Don’t get too caught up with it, it will all start to slowly sink in and make more sense with time.  

(Read the next lesson – Definite, Indefinite and Partitive Articles)