Practice Makes Perfect

si, do. Learning endings is similar. Le train, le bateau, and le vin will appear on 

your masculine scale, whereas la beauté, la nature, and la culture will register on 

your feminine scale. French is all about sounds. Gustave Flaubert used to isolate 

himself and shout his novels aloud in his gueuloir—more or less his screaming 

room—to make sure the words flowed beautifully. Think of endings as musical 

notes on a score.

In this chapter, you will learn how to connect a noun to its gender marker by 

studying the main endings of masculine nouns. Feminine nouns will follow. For 

example, nouns ending in a consonant or in any vowel but e  tend to be 

masculine: