Feminine – feminin
Let's Define It!
What's the *feminine* gender?
The French language is gendered into the masculine and feminine genders: le genre masculin le genre feminin.
The feminine gender is therefore one of the two gender-related grammatical categories for nouns and pronouns, which govern their agreement with other words such as adjectives, determiners, and past participles.
In its origins, the French genders (masculine/feminine) were rooted in the sex or the animate character of the noun/pronoun used. In the case of the feminine gender, this means that nouns innately "female" had automatically a feminine gender. For example, la femme (woman / wife), la soeur (sister), la fille (daughter/girl), la brebis (female sheep).
In today's use, gender is applied rather arbitrarily to most French nouns. As such, I encourage the careful and frequent study of nouns along with them their feminine or masculine articles to make it easy to remember them.
Next
Let's Pronounce It!
What does it sound like in French?
Next
Let's Have an Example or Two!
Can a little reinforcement do the trick?
Here are a few French nouns using the feminine gender:
- la jument
- la truie
- la tante
- la table (gender arbitrarily assigned)
- le PC (pc)
Next