Feminine – feminin
Let's Define It!
What's the *masculine* gender?
The French language is gendered into the masculine and feminine genders: le genre masculin le genre feminin.
The masculine 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 masculine gender, this means that nouns innately "male" had automatically a masculine gender. For example, le garçon (boy), le frère (brother), le monsieur (gentleman), la taureau (bull).
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.
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Let's Pronounce It!
What does it sound like in French?
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Let's Have an Example or Two!
Can a little reinforcement do the trick?
Here are a few French nouns using the masculine gender:
- le bélier (ram)
- l'homme (man)
- un oncle (uncle)
- un ordinateur (gender arbitrarily assigned)
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