LESSON 3: FÉMININ VS MASCULIN (feminine vs masculine)

In English, you don't really have the concept that word can be either feminine or masculine, a word is a word. So the pronoun or word you put in front of a noun is either a (word starts with a consonant) or an (word starts with a vowel). The equivalent of a/an in French would be «un/une». 

The word that is put in front of a noun is called «un déterminant» (a determinant). Example of English determinant would be "the" "this" "these" "those" "an" "a", ect.

In French there are so much determinant for various uses and for each one of them, there is a feminine and masculine version. (More to come on a special lesson on determinant)

So basically each object, things is either masculine or feminine. How do you know if a word is feminine or masculine? Is there a rule or a trick to help us determine if the word is feminine or masculine? Sadly there is not any magic rule. You have to guess on the go. But the more you listen to French words/tv shows/songs your brain will pick up the French words and eventually it will come naturally. 

If you have a French/English dictionary when you search a word you will see this:

In each definition, it is written if it's masculine (n.m. for «nom masculin» "masculine noun") or feminine (n.f. «nom féminin» "feminine noun"). 

Nonetheless, there are some tricks

1. If the subject is linked with a girl it's feminine

2. If it's linked with a boy it's masculine

3. When there is more than one person (two girls and one boy) it's masculine, as soon as there is one guy, the word become masculine even if there are 99 girls and 1 boy, the word will be masculine

4. If the word (noun) ends with and "e" there is a great chance the word is feminine

5. For each noun you can think of there is a feminine version, we most commonly see masculine words 

     5.1. M: acteur [ak-ther/actor] | F: actrice [ak-trice/actress]

     5.2. M: musicien [mu-zi-ssi-einh/musician] | F: musicienne [mu-zi-ssi-eihnne/musician]

6. You can also guess with the pronoun/determinant in front of the noun

    6.1. M: Le | F: La

     6.2. M: un | F: une

     6.3. M: Ce | F: Cette

     6.4. M: quel | F: quelle

     6.5. M: mon | F: ma

     6.6. M: ton | F: ta

So if you hear «la pomme» you can recognize la and la is feminine so the word pomme is feminine too!

Until then...