How do you tell is a French noun is masculin or feminine?

Question

please help. any tips or tricks to tell?

Answer 1

1. When learning vocabulary, memorize all nouns with the article - "le livre" - NOT "livre" "la table" - NOT "table"

2. Check your dictionary for any you didn't memorize.

There simply aren't any tricks!

Answer 2

Most abstract nouns --words indicating concepts are feminine. Probably ALL words that end in -tion are feminine as are nouns ending in double -e: l'annee, la soiree, etc. Of course all nouns referring to female people or animals are feminine: la fille, la mere, la grandmere, la tante, la femme, la chatte, la chienne, etc. Most nouns ending in a consonant are masculine: le mois, le vetement, etc.

Actually, size or shape make no difference in gender: la plume, la craie, le crayon, all have the same shape. Language is not a logical entity. But French gender needs to be learned because adjectives and definite articles change according to the gender of the words. We're kind of lucky in English that we don't have such problems, but people learing a second language other than English are used to gender change and often say "he" or "she" when we simply say "it." For example, the moon (la lune) is feminine in Romance languages while the sun (le soleil) is masculine. It takes time to get a feel for this problem.

Answer 3

There is no clear pattern you can use. You can learn various rules such as "all country names that end in an e are feminine, except for Mexico (le Mexique)".

Here is a source for you below of gender patterns. But there are always exceptions. In general this doesn't save you from hard work. Just learn the words as the French do, associated with "le" or "la" in front of them to indicate the gender (or "du, de la" or "au, à la", etc.)

Answer 4

Typically, if it ends in -ion it's feminine, if it ends in -ent, it's masculine, and other than that you have to memorize it.

Read lots of French and after a while you can figure it out by ear.

Answer 5

without the le or la or une or un? think its if there is an "e" at the end of a french word the word is feminine... im not sure though...

Answer 6

Le = masculin
La = feminine

Answer 7

I'm assuming you mean without "le" and "la" in front of them ?

In which case, I'm afraid the answer is "sheer bloody hard work".

Answer 8

by the article