Learn French online with our video lessons. Just click on the lesson you want to do next.
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
Learn French Online Fast With Our Weekly Lessons
Leave A Reply (138 comments so far)
-
Brent chivington
10 years agoI am in love with France because of the culture and because of a girl but nevertheless i have always wanted to learn French and this is helping me get started thx
-
kamie
10 years agowoooooooooooooooooooooooow thank
-
Spurgeon
10 years agoI am a beginner french learner and today I discovered that even the inanimate things in the world have a gender which is either male of female. I can’t believe this. How do I know which ones are male and female. How do I know which countries are males and female?
It is making thins difficult for me.
Please help me. -
khawla
10 years agoSalut!
I’m new student
I want to improve my dectation in french!
Merci -
Maichennie
10 years agoFrench is so difficult.. yet beatitul:D merci beaucoup!!
-
bonjour!
C’est website est bonne -
bonjour sirs,
im doing well with french im also from france but i did not know how to speak it well. so while i was on the net looking for french then i found je french it helped me alot i have a sister called gloria she got married so when i get called on the phone i can speak french. thank u very much sirs
yours sincerally shay -
Merci .Now I know so much I am going to be amazing in French class. Au revour
-
Joel
10 years agoDo you also have these lesson for other languages? I would like to learn Spanish but I tried an actual teacher and just couldn’t catch on. I was thinking if I did it on my own at my own pace that I might be able to catch on quicker. Thank you for the idea, but where would I go to find other lessons?
jayin and edha: your website is really good to learn french