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Learn French Online – Lesson 3 – Gender of Nouns and Articles
In French, every noun has a gender. It’s either masculin (male) or féminin (female).
You can tell the gender of a noun by the article that comes before it.
The English a will be un (m) or une (f).
The English the will be le (m) or la (f).
Examples:
| une tasse (f) a cup un poisson (m) la nuit (f) la journée (f) le soleil (m) la lune (f) la voiture (f) |
le camion (m) the truck une banane (f) un citron (m) la chaussure (f) le sac (m) la terre (f) le moteur (m) |
How do I know the gender of a French noun? I learn the noun with its article.
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
What is this?
C’est une tasse. (f)
It’s a cup.
For people, the grammatical gender is the same as the gender of the person.
| un homme a man un garçon |
une femme a woman une fille |
For animals, it depends.
Some animals have a “general gender” by which we refer to them.
We always say:
| un zèbre (m) a zebra |
une girafe (f) a giraffe |
If we want to be specific about the gender of the animal, we will add mâle or femelle to the noun.
un mâle
a male
une girafe mâle
a male giraffe
une femelle
a female
une girafe femelle
a female giraffe
Other animals have a different or modified noun for the female:
| un lion a lion un chat un chien un mouton un cochon |
une lionne (f) a female lion une chatte (f) une chienne (f) une brebis (f) une truie (f) |
More Basic French Lessons
- Previous Lesson – Greetings Part 2 In this basic French lesson we learn how to greet someone we know and are familiar with. These greetings are a little different than the ones we would use with someone we just met.
- Next Lesson – The L apostophe Learn all bout the L apostrophe as we expand on French articles and the gender of nouns and articles
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Niharika Thakur
6 years ago -
mariane
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fernando de andrade
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Ronald Jackson
7 years agoI am so delighted to have come across this web site on learnig basic french.It is like it was tailor made for me.Merci!
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Jara Arceo
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Nthabiseng
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William
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Dr.K.Nandakumar
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