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The following French tutorial was written by a soon to be graduate student in linguistics named Jennifer Wagner, who runs a fantastic website called Indo-European Languages - ielanguages.com. We thank her for generously allowing us to post her work here! |
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4. French Nouns, Articles and Demonstrative Adjectives
All nouns in French have a gender, either masculine or feminine. For the most part, you must memorize the gender, but there are some endings of words that will help you decide which gender a noun is. Nouns ending in -age and -ment are usually masculine, as are nouns ending with a consonant. Nouns ending in -ure, -sion, -tion, -ence, -ance, -té, and -ette are usually feminine.
Articles and adjectives must agree in number and gender with the nouns they modify. And articles have to be expressed even though they aren't always in English; and you may have to repeat the article in some cases. Demonstratives are like strong definite articles.
| Masculine | Feminine | Before Vowel | Plural | |||
| le lit the bed |
la pomme the apple |
l'oiseau the bird |
les gants the gloves |
| Masculine | Feminine | Plural | ||
| un lit a bed |
une pomme an apple |
des gants some gloves |
| Masc. | Masc, Before Vowel | Fem. | Plural | |||
| ce lit this/that bed |
cet oiseau this/that bird |
cette pomme this/that apple |
ces gants these/those gloves |
If you need to distinguish between this or that and these or those, you can add -ci to the end of the noun for this and these, and -là to the end of the noun for that and those. For example, ce lit-ci is this bed, while ce lit-là is that bed.
