This is a headache for non-French speakers: why are some countries male and others female? In the language class, you will learn that the countries ending with -e are feminine (except le Mozambique, le Zimbabwe, le Mexique) and the others are masculine. But you will probably have trouble knowing if the country ends with -e, so the problem is not completely solved. Here is a historical explanation that will shed light on this curiosity.

Feminine countries coming from Latin

Feminine names are the largest category of country names. There is a whole series that end in « -ie », they are all feminine. This corresponds to the Latin « -ia », which is found in the Roman languages.

Also, certain female names in « -e » are deformations of the feminine in « -ia » or « -ie »: Germany was for example “Allemania” and deformed orally; Spain was formerly “Hispania”.

Feminine countries coming from feminine adjectives

A whole series of country names have become country names after being adjectives. When they were associated with feminine names, changing into names, they kept their gender. Belgium could have been ‘’Belgie’’, since the ethnic name preceded it: there were the Belgians, as there were the Franks (who gave France). But it did not become ‘’Belgie’’ because we went through ‘’Gaulle belgique’’. The word ‘’Gaulle’’ has simply fallen, only ‘’Belgique’’ was kept.

The same goes for Argentina. When the state was created in the nineteenth century it was called the ‘’République argentine’’ and we have only kept the adjective.

Masculine names deriving from names of persons

Masculine names are less common. Sometimes they are named after anthroponyms (names of people). For example, before being a state, Israel was above all the name given to Jacob by God in the Torah after they had fought all night. (Israel means « he who fought with God » in Hebrew). Israel having been a man, the country kept the masculine gender.

Notice that it is masculine, but without an article (We say La France, le Portugal and Israel (not l’Israel)).

This comes from the fact that the country was under British mandate, and that the names of countries in English are not preceded by an article. All the translators who met Israel in the texts copied the form without an article. As a result, the Committee of French Foreign Affairs validated it as it stood.

Obviously, if there were no exception it would be too easy. For example, China derives its name from the Qin Dynasty. The Qin Empire was said to have been pronounced « Tsin », then it became ‘’Chine’’. Perhaps the fact that the word ended with an  »e » contributed to feminization because culturally the  »e » is feminine.

Masculine names deriving from rivers

In Africa, many countries are masculine for other reasons. Several are named after rivers, and the names of the African rivers having been masculine in French, the names of countries have remained: it is the case of Senegal and Congo for example.

Masculine names from the 19th century

In general, from the nineteenth century, it is the masculine gender that is more and more used to name new countries.

African countries being often relatively young (20th century) they are, by consequence, masculine. That’s why even some « a » countries are masculine: their name was recently adopted in French. Venezuela, for example, (the small Venice) was introduced as a country name in the nineteenth century, therefore masculinized.

Same for Nigeria (which was feminine and was masculinized in the 1970s) Botswana, Angola, Liberia or Canada.

Iran was for a long time Persia. At the end of the 1920s, the Pahlavi, the last Iranian dynasty before the advent of the Islamic Republic, decided to impose the Arabic name of the country, giving a modern connotation: Iran. On March 21, 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi published a decree requiring foreign countries to designate the country henceforth. It was the twentieth century, the fashion was already to the masculine gender.

Summury

How to memorize the countries’ gender?

Overall, you can remember that European countries are predominantly female and African countries are predominantly male.

Here is a very nice map to visualize genders (click to enlarge) :

Author : Colored by Zorion from public domain Wikimedia Commons source |Date=2009-

Some examples :

Voilà! Hope you enjoyed!

(1) thanks to Charlotte Pudlowski Editor-in-chief of Slate.fr for the historical details (read her article in French here http://www.slate.fr/story/11269/pourquoi-certains-noms-de-pays-sont-ils-masculins-et-dautres-feminins )

1. Before the CEFR

First CEFR means Common European Framework of Reference.

It was created by the Council of Europe in order to describe the different levels foreign language learners could reach. The aim was to harmonize the way we teach, learn and evaluate languages in all European countries. Now, this system is used even outside Europe.

It has been used since 2001. Before that, every school had its own way to describe the levels of their students. For example:

– beginner, intermediate, advanced

– level 1, level 2, level 3 etc.

As you can imagine, it was not very precise, as level 2 in one school could be very different from level 2 in another.

It was also very hard to compare your level in one language to your level in another.

What a big mess!

We were dealing with it but it had to change to adapt to the world’s globalization.

2. Description of the CEFR level

The CECR engineers had the massive job of organizing the steps of language acquisition, resulting in this classification:

A1 is the ‘’discovery’’ level, we call it Break-through in English. That means you start learning the basics. At the end of this level, you can interact in a simple way on basic daily subjects like:

Introducing yourself, expressing your tastes, organizing meeting up with friends, giving your opinion, buying something in a shop, giving an advice, describing something or someone, using present and futur proche …

After A1, this is also the moment to decide whether you want to keep with learning this language ?

A2 is the ‘’survival’’ level, we call it Waystage in English. In A1 you are note really able to have a real conversation, in A2 you can. The subjects are still very basic but you can survive in the country.

You can do everything we described in A1 but much more precisely and accurately. You can also express your opinion and write short texts.

What’s interesting in A2 is that you go through most of the important grammar themes and learn a good amount of vocabulary. Usually, people progress a lot in A2.

B1 is the intermediate level, called Threshold in the CEFR. This is not an easy level psychologically speaking. Why? Because you’ve made great progress in A2 and now you’ll have the impression to stagnate a bit. This is totally normal. The learning process is not a straight line. I have designed a graph so you can visualize the steps of the language acquisition for an average learner, it’s far from being proportional:

During B1 you learn a lot of vocabulary and practice the grammar you’ve learned in A2. You can start debating orally and express yourself with much more precision.

B2 is the upper intermediate level or vantage. We can also consider it as an advanced level in French. Indeed, B2 is a great level since you start feeling very confident in expressing yourself in all kind of subjects, even abstract ones, debate and explanations. You can explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options. In my opinion, you can make B2 the goal to reach to speak well.

C1 and C2 are specific levels for people who aim to speak like natives. In C1, you learn the vocabulary you are still missing and correct your last pronunciation problems. You should know all the grammar already, so this is not the purpose of this level.

C2 is for people who want to teach the language or to become an interpreter or a translator. If someone reaches this level, that means he/she speaks better than a lot of native speakers!

3. Amount of time to reach each level

French organisations have evaluated the number of hours necessary to reach each level. Of course, it depends a lot on the person and on the frequency of the lessons.

I have made two graphics to summarize the information. The first one gives the average time advised for each level. The second shows the total of necessary hours to reach a specific level.

For management reasons, schools don’t usually follow this chart and choose the same amount of hours for each level (approximatively 120 hours for each). As a consequence, in schools, you could have the feeling that A1 is too slow and levels after B1 are too quickly taught.

Although this feeling depends a lot on you and on your ability to learn languages.

In conclusion, I would say it’s important to follow your own rhythm while, at the same time, being aware of the specialists’ recommendations. That will help you keep on track.