Lesson - Section 1: The Agreement of Nouns Referring to People

[garçoncanadien]

PART 4: THE CONCEPT OF AGREEMENT

Lesson - Section 1:
The Agreement of Nouns Referring to People


Hi and welcome to Part 4! If you have come this far, you have learned all of the commonly used tenses except for one: the Subjonctif. Since this tense is the hardest one to use correctly, I will save it for later. For now you deserve a glass of Alizé for coming this far

Now on to today's lesson. We shall talk about gender today. You have heard earlier that all French nouns have a concept associated with them called gender, and the gender is either masculin or féminin. You do not truly know the spelling of the word until you know its gender also; this is a crucial part of correct spelling in French. Lets get straight to it. If you think this is so hard, let me remind you that Polish has 5 genders and Russian has 3 so I think French is kind of forgiving The following list goes through how to change the gender of a French word, and also how to determine what gender it is (which is in more detail next lesson). Part 4 will be mostly about gender, and this part is so important that I do not want to include any distracting topics (meaning no vocabulary or Français Quotidien for the next couple lessons) - concentrate very hard please; it is crucial that you know the concept of agreement very well

The gender of a person is pretty easy to determine, just look at the sex.

un garçon/une fille
un homme/une femme

For masculin nouns that end in -E, change the article to make the noun féminin.

un pianiste/une pianiste

For masculin nouns that do not end in -E, simply add an -E to make the noun féminin.

un ami/une amie

Major exception: enfant is invariable. It is: un/une enfant.

Masculin nouns that end in -ER can be changed to féminin by changing the -ER to -ère.

un boulanger/une boulangère hear it

Masculin nouns that end in -ON can be changed to féminin by changing the -ON to -ONNE.

un patron/une patronne hear it

Masculin nouns that end in -IEN can be changed to féminin by changing the -IEN to -IENNE.
un informaticien/une informaticienne hear it

Masculin nouns that end in -AN can be changed to féminin by changing the -AN to -ANNE.

un paysan/une paysanne hear it

Nouns that end in -EUR can be changed to féminin by changing the ending to -TRICE, or -EUSE. The correct choice is a matter of memorization

un acteur/une actrice hear it
le menteur/la menteuse hear it

Some masculin nouns become féminin by changing the ending to -esse.

Le dieu/La déesse hear it

Can you name a déese?

Some nouns are always masculin, even for designating women. The opposite is also true: some nouns are always féminin, even for designating men

un bébé (whether it be boy or girl) hear it
une personne (female or male person) hear it

This next rule is like the English one: some nouns are completely different for designating the féminin versus the masculin idea.

le coq = the rooster. la poule = the hen. hear both

And finally, the names of countries have genders as well.

l'Espagne (nf) hear it
l'Estonie (nf) hear it
les Etats Unis (nmp) hear it

Rules for countries: if it ends in -E and is French, it is probably féminin. If it ends in -E and is NOT French, it is probably masculin. Some exceptions are above. Everything else is most probably masculin.

And that is it! Please PM me the answers to the following questions. Caution there may be trick questions here

1. Please show me both genders of the following word: chanteur.
2. Please show me both genders of the following word: charcutier.
3. Please show me both genders of the following word: canadien (if you get this wrong i will lapidate you xD j/k)
4. Please show me both genders of the following word: suédois.
5. Please show me both genders of the following word: instituteur.
6. Please show me both genders of the following word: Alizé.
7. Please show me both genders of the following word: comte.
8. Please show me both genders of the following word: directeur.
9. Please show me both genders of the following word: écrivain.
10. Please show me both genders of the following word: le juge.