French Podcast Transcripts

Ten French masculine nouns to know absolutely

Ten French masculine nouns to know absolutely! Struggling with the gender of nouns in French? These 10 masculine nouns are often mistaken in French!


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Ten masculine nouns to know absolutely (they’re exceptions to the feminine grammar rule)

#1 What do French mean by masculine or feminine nouns?

To start, what does this mean feminine or masculine? In French, everything has a gender: things, places, items, plants, thoughts, countries, etc. The French language does not have any neutral. And for each noun, you have a matching gender article. As a student, you must feel overwhelmed but there is a method behind the madness!

# 2 Most of French nouns ending with the vowel -e at the end are feminine. 

In 95% of the case, if you see the letter -e at the end of the noun, the noun is feminine which leaves you with a 5% error margin!

#3 Masculine French nouns mistaken for feminine nouns

Le musée
Le cinéma
Le portefeuille
Le squelette
Le nuage (and all the nouns ending in -age, except image and plage (beach)
Le journalisme (and all the nouns ending in -isme)
Le lycée
Le frère, le père, l’oncle (gender-oriented nouns)
Le pourboire
Le génie (and all the nouns ending in -ie

And remember, the gender of the nouns does NOT depend if the noun sounds masculine to you (war, beer, dumbbell, all feminine nouns) or feminine (lipstick, makeup, necklace, all masculine nouns).


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