Masculin et féminin
Masculin et féminin
In French, do objects have a sex? Where does this strange idea come from? Who has decided that the toothpaste was a man and the toothbrush a woman? This is a question I have always asked myself.
And I have the impression that no one really has a historical answer to it.
How to answer this question that a child would ask: » So the table is the desk’s wife? »
Milner, a linguist, wrote in 1988: » We could talk about the group « le » and the group « la » rather than masculine or feminine gender. «
Indeed, the masculine and feminine appellation seems a bit ridiculous for objects.
1. Gendre in various languages
You have probably noticed that the genre does not exist in all languages.
Some languages, like Danish, have four genders: the masculine; feminine; neutral (gender neither masculine nor feminine); and the common (gender used for the masculine and feminine together).
Others, such as Russian, modern Greek, German or Slovene, have 3 genders: masculine, feminine and neutral.
English lost the gender at the Middle English stage. It is considered that English has a residual grammatical gender because some names have a hybrid behavior: animals, sometimes male or female and neutral, and, more surprisingly, land or boats often represented by the female pronoun.
Finally, some languages have no gender: most of the languages in Asia, the majority of Amerindian languages, the Uralic languages (Turkish, Mongolian, Japanese, Korean, etc.), the Finno-Ugric languages (Hungarian, Finnish , Estonian), and an isolated case among Indo-European languages: Armenian
Moreover, in languages that have genders, words do not have necessarily the same one! ‘’Book’’ is masculine in French, neutral in German and feminine in all Slavic languages!
2. How to learn the gender in French
For native speakers, it seems that the gender is learned during early childhood in a natural and unconscious way.
But for non-native French students, this is one of the most complicated thing to master. Even advanced students make mistakes.
But don’t worry, this does not block communication, and Francophones are used to foreigners making mistakes about it.
However, we must admit that Latin-speaking people will still have fewer problems learning genders, because of the similarities between their language and French.
3. Classification according to the endings
So how can you know if a word is masculine or feminine?
Even if it does not seem like it, there are some rules related to the words endings.
Somewhat, intuitive people may not be attracted to this kind of complex classification.
However, rational and scientific people will no doubt be interested in these statistics and rules. That’s why I’m showing them to you here.
4. Other classifications
5. Difficulties
Some words change of gender according to their meaning. Here is a list that will allow you to avoid any confusion:
Leave a comment to tell me your opinion about this topic or ask questions.
Op ! C’est » a mussel » en anglais, dans la mer ! C’est un homonyme avec le mot « muscle.. »
Super! Très éducatif et intéressant. Si je peux suggérer de meilleures traductions à quelques endroits, peut-être voudrez-vous rendre la pareille en corrigeant mon français inférieur ici !
une voile de bateau = a boat sail (not a boat!)
une moule dans la mer = a muscle (not a mold)
un augure (not une)
un brire = quoi? Did you mean to say un brie (fromage) ?
Merci Elsa, j’apprécie beaucoup les leçons expertes et claires de vos vidéos et votre site Web.
Thanks a lot, this is great!