By Language Center, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, USA
This is a good page about gender, though you will still find the same old chorus as anywhere else...
Very good point
"In fact it is not so much the objects or concepts themselves which have genders, but the words which describe them. This object, for example, can be either un vélo or une bicyclette."
Week points
The list of masculine and feminine endings is the usual type. As we say "why make it simple, when one can make it complex ?"
| MASCULINE Endings: | ||
| Ending | Examples | Exception |
-eau | le tableau | l'eau (f.), la peau |
| -age | le fromage | la page, une image, la cage, la plage, la nage, la rage |
| -isme | le communisme | -- |
| -ment | le moment | la dent, la jument |
| -et | le poulet | la forêt |
| -oir | le couloir | -- |
| -ail | le travail, | -- |
| FEMININE Endings: | ||
| Ending | Examples | Exceptions |
| -tion | la nation | le bastion |
| -ance/ence | la distance,la patience | le silence |
| -té | la maternité | le côté, un été... |
| -ie | la vie | le parapluie, l'incendie |
| -ette | la recette | le squelette (skeleton) |
| -elle | la vaiselle | le mille... |
| -aison | la maison | -- |
| -tude | une attitude | -- |
| -ure | la nature | ... |
| -esse | la jeunesse | -- |
Wouldn't it be simpler to present it this way: Feminine nouns end with: - final e, - suffixes -ion/-aison, -ité and -eur(qualities) (These 2 rules cover more than 90% of feminine nouns) Masculine nouns end with - no specific marker, - suffixes -age, -isme, -aire and -oire - endings -asme, -acle, -ome, -ème, -ège, -ile (These 3 rules cover round about 80% of masculine nouns) |
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