What is the difference between feminine and masculine words in french

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Search for Your Teacher. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Most adjectives have four forms: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural. Masculine Singular: amusant fun , bleu blue , vert green , content happy Feminine Singular: amusante, bleue, verte, contente Masculine Plural: amusants, bleus, verts, contents Feminine Plural: amusantes, bleues, vertes, contentes. You simply add either an — e, -s, or — es.

If the masculine form of an adjective ends in an unaccented — e , then the feminine form is the same and only an -s is needed for plural forms. Example: triste sad , triste , tristes, tristes.

If the masculine form of an adjective ends in — l or — n , then you make it feminine by doubling the consonant. Example: bon good , bonne, bons, bonnes. If it ends in -c , then — che is the feminine ending. Example: blanc white , blanche, blancs, blanches.

If it ends in -eux , then — euse is the feminine ending. Example: amoureux romantic , amoureuse, amoureux, amoureuses. If it ends in — f , then -ve is the feminine ending. Example: actif active , active, actifs, actives. If it ends in -eur , then — euse is usually the feminine. Example: menteur lying , menteuse, menteurs, menteuses. These are listed in the order of: masculine, masculine before a vowel, feminine, masculine plural, and feminine plural.

Beautiful: beau, bel, belle, beaux, belles Crazy: fou, fol, folle, fous, folles New: nouveau, nouvel, nouvelle, nouveaux, nouvelles Old: vieux, vieil, vieille, vieux, vieilles. Usually this is straightforward because the subject is either j e, tu, il, elle, nous, vous, ils, or elles. The endings stay the same for each verb, and the rules are the same if the subject is say, une lampe, and not a personal pronoun.

You should always learn nouns together with their articles to be sure of their gender. Some job titles only exist in the masculine because their meaning changes when they are used in the feminine form. Our online exercises for French help you to learn and practice grammar rules in an interactive manner. You have to learn only those few masculine endings with E as last letter… Quite simple.

You are right, this would work quite well. That would probably work in most cases. Out of curiosity, just now I went through the vocab lists for my French II textbook — and confirmed that the above rule correctly identifies NOTE: the endings for feminine words that you listed above follow this rule for the most part, without having to remember dozens of different endings.

So if I have understood that la command , is feminine because of article la, refer to: the action to act on a mechanism. So is different from le commandement masculine example: Je vous laisse le commandement. Have I misunderstood or, in this case, with two different meanings of the word command and two different ways to write it , one case has a feminine form and the other a masculine one?

You understood well. These are two different words, although their meaning and origin are similar. Lots of French words look similar but have a different gender. I saw into a youtube vid that scandinavian languages have also a third gender, the neutral nouns. Yeah German has a third gender too. And I think Finnish has Crazy :D. French is easy in comparison. The more you read and hear French, the most you will be able to automatically determine whether a word is feminine or masculine.

It will get easier and easier with time :. Maybe they have also one gender to speak about aliens!? Apart from genders. One of the nightmare of children studying French at school is the question of accents on words, but if you compare Hungarian writing and Vietnamese also, you can see that French is not so bad, in comparison. Yeah French is actually one of the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn.

When I was teaching French in Korea, I could see how difficult it was for Koreans to know in what orders to put the words, which is relatively easy for English speakers. Yeah, I have no doubts about what you say.

The past week Sam Gendreau wrote an interesting article right on Korean language. He suggests the Hangul alphabet is not so difficult to learn compared to other oriental languages. Yeah hangul is quite easy to learn. And there are many patterns you can use when learning it. I made a wrong example, writing in English instead of French language, but still I think it shows the meaning that I wanted explain.

In Hungarian, you spell everything just the way you hear it phonetic writing — no silent letters. What makes Hungarian writing an eyesore is that there are several compound letters and accentuation marks, which are needed express all 44! On the other hand, it is at least consistent — a letter always signifies the same sound. Display a Gravatar image next to my comments. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Feminine, or masculine? That is the question you often ask yourself as a French learner.

Table of Contents. Why are there genders in French? Why French genders matter. Other ways to learn and remember the gender of French words. How to learn and practice French noun gender. French gender rules explained. Have feminism and the gender equality movement had an effect on the French language? Isabelle Reply. Je me demandais si meme les Francais de souche se trompent de temps en temps du genre? I am incredibly grateful, thank you Reply. Feminine noun always ends with E Reply.

Not really, for example: une chanson, un fleuve. And words ending in -age, -ege or -isme. Every noun has a gender Reply. Masculine noun endings Most words with other endings are masculine. Is sujet feminine or masculine Reply.