Masculine and Feminine People

In French all nouns are masculin or feminine : people, animals, objects, things. Lets study how this works for people nouns.

Articles (un, une, le, la, l’)

When a person is masculin, he is introduced with the articles UN or LE

  • Un Père, Le Père (a father, the father)

When a person is feminine she is introduced with the articles UNE or LA

  • Une Mère, La Mère (a mother, the mother)

Le and La are always replaced with L’ in front of a vowel.

  • L’orthophoniste, l’agriculteur. (the speech therapist, the farmer)

Here are a list of Nouns. See if you can complete the missing articles according to gender. Listen to the recording for correction.

correction

____Un______ frère, ____le_____ frère. (brother) –> masculin

___Une_______ soeur, ____la______ soeur. (sister) –> feminine

_________ fille, ___________ fille. (girl)

__________ garçon, __________ garçon. (boy)

_________ cousin, __________ cousin. (male cousin)

__________ cousine, _________ cousine. (female cousin)

_________ reine, __________ reine. (queen)

_________ roi, __________ roi. (king)

Noun Endings

In French you can change a noun’s gender by changing its ending.The most common is to add an E. Here is a list of examples. In the recording I read each noun, first in masculin form, then in feminine. Listen and repeat.

Ending changeMasculinFeminine
Add E for feminineCousin
Client
Français
Ami
Invité
Cousine
Cliente
Française
Amie
Invitée
en –> enneMagicien
Coréen
Magicienne
Coréenne
eur –> euseVendeur
Chercheur
Vendeuse
Chercheuse
teur –> triceActeur
Directeur
Actrice
Directrice
er –> èreÉtranger
Boulanger
Étrangère
Boulangère
No changeCollègue
Touriste
Secrétaire
Collègue
Touriste
Secrétaire

One obvious exception is the feminine of chanteur = chanteuse. Sorry about that! Otherwise the rules apply.

 

Let’s do a few exercises to get used to this. click for the correction:

masculin-feminine-people-exercises

corrigecc81-noun-genders

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