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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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Leave A Reply (138 comments so far)
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egbune ogoamaka
10 years agoam a beginer tnks for your french it is very useful
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onyimba amaka
10 years agothe lessons are very easy to understand.thanks
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Naomi
10 years agoGreat lessons, easy to follow. Thank you.
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Christine
10 years agoLove this site and videos, the speed is great. Some others are so slow I lose interest. So glad I found it, merci
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atiyeh
10 years agothanks,it was very helpful
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tausif khan
10 years agoIts great and informative way for revision for beginner, I myself is learning french, and visited this site for revision.
Merci
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Philemon Ewuah
10 years agohow to determine the the gender of the noun
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Michael Joseph Adah
10 years agoThis is amazing. Greetings in French have become natural to me. Please i would suggest that you make possible, the sharing of this site, to enable me share this on face book with my friends. This will be more educative and interesting.
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Suzanne
10 years agoExcellent site! Bravo! It is not just for beginners – it forms an excellent review! (One is never done learning French!) The teacher has a very “easy-listening” voice.
i’m very thank you for this! It’s very help me to learn about french. but so difficult to say the words. and kinda make me confused at all. but I’ll always learn it well. so keep teach me
love, astrid from Indonesia