Grammatical gender? What is it? How do you use the feminine and masculine in French? How do know if itās feminine or masculine?
Ah the big issue of gender in French!
It torments you, you donāt understand why, or how, or anything to be honest. Who decided tables were women, but horses were men?!
Ok, ok. Letās demystify this.
In this article, Iām going to explain to you what is grammatical gender in French, and what it does.
Author : Marie Drouvin
Salut! Je suis Marie and I'm on a mission to make learning French simple. You can find me on Youtube, or here, on this blog. And if you want to know more about how to learn French, take a look at my book.
If you'd rather listen to this lesson, check out my video.
If not, keep reading!
First, does knowing feminine and masculine in French really matter?
āI believe that is very, very important.ā
ā¦ is a lie. A big fat lie that grammar purists like to throw around.
Maybe they like to make you stress, maybe they like to feel superior on the sole basis of their mastery of grammar, or maybe they cannot handle things that arenāt perfect.
Who knows!Ā
Spoiler: Grammar purists and I donāt get along.
But as a French native, and a French teacher I can tell youā¦
NO, grammatical gender in French is NOT crucial.
Plural is more important!
If your goal is only to make yourself understood, then you donāt need to be perfectly perfect with masculine and feminine genders, grammatically speaking of course. French people will still understand you if you use the wrong gender.
Now, that doesnāt mean that you should completely ignore it either.
Because it does make your French instantly better when you use the right genders.
Just like when you use the right verb endings.
Now letās get to it.
What does it mean for a word to be feminine and masculine in French?
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN??
If you are a native English speaker, or a native of a language that doesnāt use grammatical genderā¦ it might sound a bit odd to your ears to hear a table is feminine and a horse is masculine.
If you are a native speaker of the many languages that do have grammatical gender (like Spanish, Portuguese, hell even Romanian), then good!
But if notā¦
The key is that ā itās not about sex.
Nor about male or female.
A table is not a woman, a horse is not a man. That would be ludricrous.
(Always wanted to use that word!)
No, itās only a matter of grammar.
Thatās all.
Itās like adding an -s at the third person of the singular in the present simple in English.
He eatS
It doesnāt make sense. But we do it anyway.
Gender of nouns is here to make it all sound beautiful together. To put sentences on the same note. To make sure all the words of a sentence are singing the same tune.
Thatās all there is to it.
When are words feminine and masculine in French?
Good news: itās not ALL words that have a gender.
Only NOUNS!
Verbs donāt have a gender.
Adjectives donāt have a gender.
Adverbs donāt have a gender.
Prepositions donāt have a gender.
You get the idea.
Common-nouns (as opposed to proper nouns) are generally inanimate objects, or animated ones, concepts or animals.Ā
Now they are going to influence verbs, adjectives and other types of words, but they are the only one coming with a grammatical gender.
So in a sentence:
Je vais Ć la plage : Iām going to the beach.
There is only one noun in this sentence. Only one grammatical gender. The word plage.
And itās feminine.
Other examples:
La table : the table (Feminine)
La voiture : the car (F)
Le chat : the cat (Masculine)
Le chien : the dog (M)
La maison : the house (F)
Lāattente : the wait (F)
Are there rules to know when a word is feminine and masculine in French?
- Keep it light
- Be nice to me
I like these rules. They apply everywhere.
Here too.
You see, grammar, rules, there are always lots of them. Always a long list. But the thing is ā thatās not where you should start.
Rules always come after. Rules are build for a situation that already exist.
Language, words already existed, before rules. So any rule that you heard, especially rules about grammatical gender, are rules that have been deduced from the way French people were already using gender.
Thatās why, there are so many you canāt count.
And even if some of them make sense ā such a the gender of countries ā they are largely just trying to explain a big mess.
A big mess of random chaos.
In truth, there are no rules. Words are either feminine and masculine in French, thatās all. There is no reason, no order.
Who decides when words are feminine and masculine in French?
Good question! Iām glad you ask.
Technically, officially, there is an institution in France, who is in charge of deciding anything related to the French language: LāAcadĆ©mie FranƧaise.
Although, thatās not how languages work. First, we use it, then we try to make it fit into little boxes.
Not the other way around.
So even if LāAcadĆ©mie FranƧaise ruled and officially stated that the word Covid (the COVID virus) is feminineā¦ In reality, French people had decided way before that by using the masculine.
How can I know the gender of a word then?
If your learning material donāt mention it, or if you canāt make it up from a sentence, the only way to be sure is toā¦ check a dictionary.
Now, I recommend you use WordReference.com
Because itās as easy to use as Google Translate, and itās actually better ā because it gives you all sorts of definitions, examples in context, AND the gender of nouns!
On the picture below, you can see that the gender of the word chat is masculine, because you have the abbreviation nmĀ which means masculine name.
On the website, you can hoover on the abbreviation to know what it means. (Very useful to know where to place words in sentences!)
Ā
How do you memorize gender of nouns then?
Easy answer : when you are learning French vocabulary, you learn nouns with the gender.
Instead of learning ātableā, you learn āla tableā.
If you want a more complete answer about memorisation: read How to remember French words.
Are there exceptions? You bet there is!
Oh oh, here comes trouble.
Oui, there are exceptions.
But nah, donāt worry. Itās all logical.
So I told you nouns have one gender. 1 noun = 1 gender.
EXCEPT, 1 noun doesnāt equal to one definition.
Have you heard of homonymes?Ā
Words that are spelled the same way, pronounced the same way, but donāt mean the same things. For example.
Le vase : the vase (M)
La vase : the mud (F)
Le livre : the book (M)
La livre : the pound (F)
See how the gender changes? Well thatās homonymes for you.
Some words also have a feminine version. Thatās the case of most words that define people.
Like job titles.
Un boulanger : a baker (masculine noun)
Une boulangĆØre : a baker (female baker, and feminine noun)
Un agriculteur : a farmer (masculine noun)
Une agricultrice : a farmer (female farmer and feminine noun)
Generally, only the words ending change. And if you pay attention, you might find some patterns there 
Now, it wasnāt that bad was it?
Now, why does gender in French actually matters? And what impact does it have?
Ok, now what does feminine and masculine in French matter?
In short, it has an impact on other words in a sentence.
3 specific kind of words.
Gender of nouns in French influence articles
Articles are those little words in front of nouns.
Note: They are sometimes called determiner.
They give information about the quantity or which object, concept or animal it is.
In context:
The cat
It is a red car
In French, the article you choose depends on the gender of the noun.
La fille : the daughter (F)
Une fille : a daughter (F)
Le garƧon : the boy (M)
Un garƧon : a boy (M)
Which article should you use? Look at this beautiful chart Iāve made for you!!Ā
Note: Lā is used when the noun starts with a vowel.
Oui, Iām including pronouns in articles, sue me.
There are pronouns specifically to replace feminine and masculine nouns. Elle is the feminine pronoun. Il is the masculine pronoun (also used for neuter situations).
Elle : She
La voiture est rouge. Elle est rouge. : The car is red. She is red.
andĀ
Il : He
Le film Ć©tait bien. Il Ć©tait bien. : The movie was good. He was good.
And in the plural ā Elles is for feminine words or people / Ils is for masculine and mixed words or people.
Gender of nouns in French influence adjectives
Adjectives are words that give you more information about the noun.
Both words will be linked ā so they need to be complimentary. They need to agree on some level.
Just like a couple.
So if one is feminine, then the other need to be too.
Une grande fille : a tall girl.
Un grand garƧon : a tall boy
Generally, the feminine form is simply the masculine form of the adjective, with an -e at the end.
You can find a detailed example on this article about the adjective cute in French.
Note : Including possessive adjectives, which I talk about in this article (coming soon!)
Gender of nouns in French influence past participles
Now for beginners, youāre set. You donāt need to read what follows, or it would spoil the surprise of compound tenses for you.
But, if you are an intermediate, then you might be familiar with compound tenses.
Compound tenses are tenses that have several parts to then. An auxiliary, and a participle.
Like a past participle.
La classe est finie. : The class is over.
Le livre est fini. : The book is over.
See how the ending changes? Well thatās how the gender influence the past participle.
And the ending also depends on the verb group. Which areā¦. (second line is masculine, third is feminine)
And now what?
Now youāre ready.
Because you understand genders, you know what to look out for when you build a sentence and want to use the right gender at the right time.
You have a better understanding of what it does and what it means.
Now, go make me proud!
PS: And join us at the French Club if you enjoyed this article. When you are a member of the club, you can send me questions about why and grammar, and Iāll do my best to answer! YAY
PPS: A little bit of sharing would make this website even better too!
PPPS: And check out these article, youāll find plenty of words to use there!
Learn more French words:
7 ways to say BYE in French š
Bye in French? Well there are actually quite a few words you can use. Pick which one you need when you need to say bye in French!
Yes in French š«š· 10 ways to say oui in French
How to say yes in French? You shouldnāt say āouiā in all situations! Letās find out 10 ways to say yes in French.
2 thoughts on āFeminine and masculine in French š©āā¤ļøāšØ simple explanationā
I have a question ā If someone is talking to a woman about a man, for example, āThe maid (a female) walked up to Chloe and told her that she had a visitor (a male)ā
What would be the proper genders for the nouns? Is it all feminine because itās said to a womanā¦or is it all feminine because itās said by a woman? Iāve confused myself, now. Hope you understand what Iām asking and that you can help!
Thanks!
As a total novice this is the first time I have been able to make sense out of this language, that doesnāt mean it will be easy for me but Iām getting closer to understanding. Many thanks. Tone.