subject: French tutorial : French Nouns [print this page] French tutorial : French Nouns
French is a great language to learn. There are a lot of countries who use French as their main languages. They are mainly located in Africa. So if you want to travel all around the world you need to speak it.
Here is a free french lesson about nouns and article.
One of the most difficult in French is nouns gender. There are two categories of nouns in French: masculine and feminine. The masculine article is le.
Let's give an example of a noun with a feminine article. For example, the French translation for "the table" is "la table". Why is the table feminine in French? I have no idea. It seems pretty natural to me because I was born and raised in France. But for someone who doesn't know French at all it's almost impossible to guess if a noun is feminine or masculine.
For example, the French translation for the harbor is "le port". An other example is that the translation of the parquet is "le parquet". Again, I have no idea why boat, casque or parquet is a masculine noun in French.
Don't worry too much. There are some rules. For examples, French nouns ending in eur, -eau or -ment are masculine. For example, if you want to use the noun "dmnageur" (revol man) you will use the ending in eur to know it's a masculine noun. Therefore, the article to use is le.
There are also some rules for feminine nouns. French nouns ending in euse or elle are usually feminine. For example, the word chanteuse is feminine because it ends in euse.
As a matter of fact, the masculine equivalent of "chanteuse" is "chanteur". So in french, a female singer is translated by "chanteuse" and a male singer by "chanteur"
So as you can see there are some rules to help you with nouns. However, the best technique to improve is to read French novels, magazines or websites. Seeing the articles "le" and "la" will help you to get used to feminine and masculine nouns.
Again, don't worry too much. French will understand you if you're using "le" instead of "la". It will even give you some charm. A really famous singer in France is called Jane Birkin. She is known to always confuse "le" or "la" even if she lives in France for 30 years.
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