Nouns and Use of Gender in French

A noun is a word that gives a name to either an object (such as a ‘table’), a person (such as ‘queen,’ ‘father’ or ‘grandmother’) or a place (such ‘London’). A noun may also name ideas or concepts (such as ‘love’ or ‘friendship’).

When a noun refers to a person, such as a ‘mother,’ or ‘father,’ the gender is obviously feminine or masculine by nature of the word. Correspondingly in English, we use words such as ‘she’ and ‘he’ to refer back to the gender of these words. However, you may have seen an expression such as, “The ship was launched last week. She is a high quality vessel, built in Ireland.” Very rarely, we give objects a gender in English. There is an unwritten rule, for example, that ships are feminine. However, this is not standard English usage, and a more likely statement would be: ” ‘The ship was launched last week. It is a high quality vessel, built in Ireland.” Nevertheless, in the first example, we are expressing gender for a noun.

This is the principle that applies in French. All nouns in French are either masculine or feminine, regardless of whether they refer to people or not.

The gender of a noun affects words that we use in association with that noun. While English uses “the” for everything, French would use either ‘le’ or ‘la.’

For example “coat” is ‘le manteau,’ (masculine) while a “jacket” is ‘la veste’ (feminine).

It is therefore important to know the gender of French nouns as many other words undergo changes that reflect the gender of the noun.

Here are some examples, with masculine and feminine:

le manteau the coat la veste the jacket

un manteau a coat la veste a jacket

mon manteau my coat ma veste my jacket

A number of other words reflect gender in a similar way and over time, you’ll see patterns emerging.

But it is why we must always try and learn a French word with its associated gender. It’s why many vocabulary lists include the word for “the” in the listing, or provide some other indication or notation, such as “nm” or “masc” and “nf” or “fem” next to the word to convey gender. You will find this or some equivalent notation for all nouns in dictionaries as well.