Practice Makes Perfect

13

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Basic gender endings:  

Masculin and féminin

Basic endings

As you already know, there are two genders in French: masculine and feminine, 

preceded by the definite article le, la or the indefinite article un, une. Since the 

purpose of this book is to forge a reliable method of identifying and learning 

French genders, we will learn the fundamental rules governing genders, starting 

with masculine nouns and then moving on the feminine nouns. Along with the 

rules, we will identify their exceptions. Indeed, exceptions to grammatical rules 

can be annoying, but this is a “flaw” of all natural languages. (Only constructed 

languages, such as Esperanto, contain rules without exceptions.)

While you may be tempted to say that French gender can sometimes be arbi-

trary, you do have some name endings to rely on. Memorization is crucial. Every 

new word must be learned in conjunction with its gender. This knowledge, as you 

will find out, quickly becomes tacit, internalized. After some practice, you will be 

able to identify the gender of a word by relying on your intuition, without even 

having to think in terms of rules and exceptions.

In your mind, each word will become like a short musical phrase. You won’t 

have to think which key, major or minor, the musical phrase is in. You will simply 

know. When you study music, you learn scales. In French: do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la,