mercredi 1 septembre 2010

Gender QUIZ


Answer a 100 question QUIZ
on GENDER in French (beginner level)
about.com website.

And come back here for more insights

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So what is your score ?



In this QUIZ, 90 words out of one hundred follow the basic GENDER RULE, that is to say nouns ending in -e are feminine (fraise, cerise, armoire...), other endings are masculine (couloir, cours, jardin...). So this was an easy one.

Ten nouns don't follow the basic gender rule:

Six have irregular suffixes or endings:

-fromage (cheese) and visage (face) like hundreds of other nouns are derived from masculine suffix -age

-addition and maison (house) are derived from feminine suffix -ion / -aison
avion (plane) is derived from regular masculine suffix -on, and is therefore masculine (the Latine root AVI- means bird like in avian flue)

- dentifrice (toothpaste) is a tricky one as it belongs to the bivalent suffix -ice family.

- musée like lycée, scarabée., caducée.. is masculine due to its learned ending


4 words are PURE exceptions

-dent (tooth) and main (hand) are two feminine exceptions.

-coude (elbow) is masculine like its Latin etymon cubĭtus m.)

-pamplemousse (grapefruit) is masculine though the original noun in Dutch was feminine.