Rules to Remember About Country Names And Nationalities In French. It means that when speaking about a specific country, lets take France and Germany for example,. sierra-lonaise. Although, thats not how languages work. Why are French words masculine and feminine? In my language, we do not have the male for female words for things, we just add another word to the back and done deal, lol. For example, here are few country names in French you might recognize. But now, you are wondering, how can you know which countries are feminine and which are masculine? Not sure, we have that. This rule applies to adjectives that end in most consonants as well as all vowels except the unaccented E. The former is used in order to have a refreshing drink while the latter one is preferred for its more ceremonial atmosphere. Your article is a great resource. 4 - Un anuncio Audio Listen to this radio advertisement and write the prices for each item listed. When you are a member of the club, you can send me questions about why and grammar, and Ill do my best to answer! Examples: une fille (a girl), une voiture (a car), une fentre (a window), etc. Although getting the gender right is very important, most of the time the wrong gender will not hinder your ability to understand or to communicate in French, because most words have a single gender. However, for states and countries, its important to understand gender because this will tell us what prepositions to use with them. This button displays the currently selected search type. English has only two indefinite articles: a and an. It does not store any personal data. Gender matters in French. She currently teaches French at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas.
","authors":[{"authorId":9721,"name":"Veronique Mazet","slug":"veronique-mazet","description":"Véronique Mazet has a doctorate in French from the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of two successful grammar books. (= physical activity) exercice m to take exercise prendre de l'exercice to get exercise faire de l'exercice 2. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Gender doesnt matter. I have a hard time learning any language. PPS: A little bit of sharing would make this website even better too! Examples: du lait (some milk), du jus (some juice), du beurre (some butter), etc. And quite fascinating as well. Let's go over each of the rules with examples now! You will have to memorize them. To put sentences on the same note. I've lived in France since 2011. I said most cases because there are some exceptions. By the way, is Latvian similar to Russian? YAY. l'oiseau bird le chat cat le poulet chicken la vache cow le chien dog le canard duck l'elephant elephant le poisson fish la grenouille frog la chvre goat le cheval horse le cochon pig le lapin rabbit le serpent snake la dinde turkey la tortue turtle An auxiliary, and a participle. Not all country names sound similar to their name in English, for example England in French is Angleterre (On-Gluh-Tear). Exception: "Orange" is only masculine as a color - as a fruit it's feminine. (= use) Makes sense? Gender of nouns is here to make it all sound beautiful together. Others are always feminine, like une voiture (a car), une maison (a house), and une cole (a school). Good. Probably a good idea to memorize this list. Old English used to have grammatical genders, but they fell out of use. Vocabulary; Vegetables; French - Vegetables. For a feminine noun une means a and la. l'asperge asparagus la betterave beet le poivron bell pepper le broccoli . Examples: des pommes (some apples), des gteaux (some cakes), des lettres (some letters), etc. As a color, it's masculine, but as a flower, it's feminine. For plural nouns, we use des. So, dont worry. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Denmark is Danemark, France is France, Japan isJapon. Wow! I have allowed myself to use such sloppy English that I have to stop and think sometimes when I say something, or mainly write. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. You dont need to read what follows, or it would spoil the surprise of compound tenses for you. We dont spam! The Power of Mental Rehearsal & How You Can Use This for Success. But there are far too many words that end in "e" that turn out to be masculine, making this approach difficult to use with any degree of accuracy. I have a question If someone is talking to a woman about a man, for example, The maid (a female) walked up to Chloe and told her that she had a visitor (a male) Were full of insecurities and dont want to make any mistakes. Hopefully when I make enough mistake I can progress in time. I've also included the names of French territories and the names of the continents in French and English. I think the hardest part of language learning is that there are those distinctions in masculine and feminine. 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. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. Its actually a very interesting and practical thing to know. The English equivalent is some. For instance, some nouns are always masculine no matter what, like un sac (a bag), un manteau (an overcoat), and un ordinateur (a computer).\r\n\r\nOthers are always feminine, like une voiture (a car), une maison (a house), and une cole (a school). And some words are the tricksters of the bunch, taking on different meanings with different genders, like livre, which is a book when masculine but a pound when feminine!\r\n
How to identify masculine French nouns
\r\nYou can recognize many masculine nouns by the type of ending they have.\r\nNoun Ending | \r\nExamples | \r\n
---|---|
-acle | \r\nmiracle (miracle), spectacle\r\n(show), obstacle\r\n(obstacle) | \r\n
-age | \r\nfromage (cheese), voyage\r\n(trip), bagage\r\n(luggage) | \r\n
-aire | \r\nfrigidaire (fridge), anniversaire\r\n(birthday), commentaire\r\n(commentary) | \r\n
- (but not -t) | \r\ndegr (degree),\r\nmarch (market), cong\r\n(holiday) | \r\n
-eau | \r\ndrapeau (flag), chapeau\r\n(hat), cadeau\r\n(gift) | \r\n
-er and -ier | \r\ndner (dinner), panier\r\n(basket), cahier\r\n(notebook) | \r\n
-isme | \r\ntourisme (tourism), absolutisme\r\n(absolutism), capitalisme\r\n(capitalism) | \r\n
-ment | \r\ngouvernement (government), ornement\r\n(ornament), divertissement\r\n(entertainment) | \r\n