How to Easily Guess the

Gender of French Nouns with

80% Accuracy
by Benjamin Houy (https://frenchtogether.com/french-nouns-gender/)

Feminine or masculine, that is the question you often ask yourself as a French learner. After hours
trying to figure out why “cheveux” (hair) is masculine and “chaise” (chair) feminine, you came to
the inevitable conclusion: the gender of French nouns was randomly chosen by a bunch of sadistic
linguists.

You may have heard that there is only one way to know the gender of a noun, to learn it by heart.

Luckily this is one of many myths about the French language, and you can actually know the
gender of a French noun with more than 80% accuracy just by looking at its ending.

Contents [hide]
 1 Why French genders matter
 2 How to know the gender of French nouns with 80% accuracy
o 2.1 Associate each gender with a vivid image
o 2.2 Guess the gender based on the word’s ending
o 2.3 A simplified list of endings
 3 French gender rules explained
o 3.1 Articles
o 3.2 Pronouns
o 3.3 Adjectives
o 3.4 Verbs
o 3.5 Voulez-vous parler français ?

Why French genders matter

You can’t master French if you don’t master French genders. Luckily, the use of French
genders is pretty straightforward, even if your language doesn’t use genders for nouns.

Before you discover how to easily know the gender of French nouns with 80% accuracy, you need
to know that the gender has an influence on:

 The article you use before a noun

 Pronouns
 The ending of adjectives and verbs

You’ll discover how genders change these elements in the last section of this article, but before
you do, here is how to easily know the gender of French words

How to know the gender of French nouns with 80% accuracy

Associate each gender with a vivid image

Your French teacher told you to do this, and this may be the only solution in some cases. But
instead of simply learning each word and its gender by heart, it can be smart to associate each
gender with an action in your brain.

You could imagine that masculine nouns fall into water while feminine nouns are eaten by a
monster. Associating each noun with such a vivid image helps you remember its gender more
easily.

The association needs to be personal, this must be something you will easily remember. For
example, If you love to sing, you could sing each word with a different tone depending on its
gender.

Guess the gender based on the word’s ending

According to a study by McGill University, a noun’s ending indicates its gender in 80% of cases .
Based on this study, here is a list of typically masculine and typically feminine noun endings.

Nouns with these endings were found to be of the same gender in more than 90% of cases.

I don’t recommend you to learn these endings by heart since it would be extremely boring.
Instead, bookmark this page and regularly look at this list.

After a while, you will see that you can intuitively guess the gender of a noun based on its ending.

I also created a simplified list that’s easier to remember. You’ll find it below this first list :).

Typically masculine noun endings (+90%)

 -an, -and, -ant, -ent, -in, -int, -om, -ond, -ont, -on (but not after s/c¸)
 -eau, -au, -aud, -aut, -o, -os, -ot
 -ai, -ais, -ait, -es, -et
 -ou, -out, -out, -oux
 -i, -il, -it, -is, -y
 -at, -as, -ois, -oit
 • -u, -us, -ut, -eu
 -er, -e´after C (C=t)
 -age, -ege, – ` eme, -ome/- ` ome, -aume, -isme
 -as, -is, -os, -us, -ex
 -it, -est
 -al, -el, -il, -ol, -eul, -all
 -if, -ef
 -ac, -ic, -oc, -uc
 -am, -um, -en
 -air, -er, -erf, -ert, -ar, -arc, -ars, -art, -our, -ours, -or, -ord, -ors, -ort, -ir, -oir, -eur
(if animate)
 -ail, -eil, -euil, -ueil
 -ing

Typically feminine noun endings (+90%)

 -aie, -oue, -eue, -ion, -te, – ´ ee, -ie, -ue

 -asse, -ace, -esse, -ece, -aisse, -isse/-ice, -ousse, -ance, -anse, -ence, -once
 -enne, -onne, -une, -ine, -aine, -eine, -erne
 -ande, -ende, -onde, -ade, -ude, -arde, -orde
 -euse, -ouse, -ase, -aise, -ese, -oise, -ise, -yse, -ose, -use
 -ache, -iche, -eche, -oche, -uche, -ouche, -anche
 -ave, -eve, -ive
 -iere, -ure, -eure
 -ette, -ete, – ˆ ete, -atte, -otte, -oute, -orte, -ante, -ente, -inte, -onte
 -alle, -elle, -ille, -olle
 -aille, -eille, -ouille
 -appe, -ampe, -ombe
 • -igue

A simplified list of endings

The previous list has the advantage of being exhaustive, but

as French Together reader Amosnliz notes in the comment
section, you can learn a simplified, and shorter list.

While there is no precise data available, you can consider that

you’ll be right 80% of the time if you use this simplified list.

Feminine noun endings

 The majority of words that end in -e or -ion.

 Except words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme (these
endings often indicate masculine words).

Masculine noun endings

Most words with other endings are masculine.

French gender rules explained

You now know how to easily identify the gender of French nouns. Now let’s see why knowing the
gender of French words is so important.

Here is what changes based on genders:

Articles

In English, you always use “the”. In French, you have a masculine “the” (le) and a feminine “the”
(la).

Similarly, you have a masculine “a” (un) and a feminine “a” (une).

Finally, while you say “some” in English. You need to make the distinction between “du”
(masculine) and “de la” (feminine) in French.

Pronouns

Like in English, pronouns change depending on the subject’s gender.

He = il
she = elle

however, unlike English, there are two ways to say “they”.

Elles (feminine subject)

Ils (masculine subject)

Adjectives

French adjectives change based on the gender and number of the noun they modify. This means
the adjective is either:

 Masculine singular
 Feminine singular
 Masculine plural
 Feminine plural

Let’s take several adjectives as examples. These are adjectives you can use to guess how other
adjectives with similar endings will change.

Content (happy)

Masculine singular: content

Feminine singular: contente
Masculine plural: contents
Feminine plural: contentes

Fatigué (tired)

Masculine singular: fatigué

Feminine singular: fatiguée
Masculine plural: fatigués
Feminine plural: fatiguées

Bon (good)

Masculine singular: bon

Feminine singular: bonne
Masculine plural: bons
Feminine plural: bonnes

Read 13 common French mistakes that’ll make you feel awkward before you use it.

Triste (sad)

Masculine singular: triste

Feminine singular: triste
Masculine plural: tristes
Feminine plural: tristes

There are of course exceptions, but if you know these patterns, you’ll know how most adjectives
change based on the gender of the noun they modify.
Verbs

The passé composé tense is the most striking example of the influence of genders and number on
conjugation.

Je suis allé(e)
Tu es allé(e)
Il/elle est allé(e)
Nous sommes allé(e)s
Vous êtes allé(e)(s)
Ils/elles sont allé(e)s

As you can see, the verb changes based on the subject’s number and gender. This is also true for
other compound tenses.

These differences are only noticeable in written French since the pronunciationremains the same.

If there is only one thing you should remember for this lesson, it’s that the majority of words ending
in -e or -ion are feminine while words with other endings are mostly masculine. It’s not going to
work all the time, but you’re much more likely to be right if you follow this rule than if you simply
guess.

The other way that I would like to suggest you all. Most of his suggestions are right. For Masculin
The things which are
– strong
– handsome
– wild
– powerful
– Sharp are masculin
For Example.
Strong as rock, diamond , Jade , sand . Alcohol, wine, almost all of the fruits in sour taste, the time you can see the sun as morning, noon, evening,
and the meals we eat in day time etc.
‘Handsome’ all buildings apartment, museum, cinema, airport , Bus stop, Jetty ,
‘Wild’
Most of the animals,
Powerful as most of the weapons knife, sword, gun, canon, missile, rocket,
Sharp as
Glass , mirror, pen, pencil
Féminins are different.

From rule above, maybe there is way to simplify it, all endings with ‘e’ are feminine +90%,
except endings :
-age, -ege, – ` eme, -ome/- ` ome, -aume, -isme

This way entire rule can be reduced to 7 masculine ending exceptions and we could say +90%
ending ‘e’ – feminine
ending anything but ‘e’ – masculine

I observed that some inanimate french objects that have Pair Properties (double sides) are feminine, while others are masculine. Some of these
also do have the “-e” ending following the principle above
Examples: ‘une gomme’ – an eraser has two ends.
‘une table’ – a table has four legs.
‘une regle’ – a ruler has two sides.
Other words like stylo, livre, crayon, cahier tableau are masculine as they do not seem to share this (pair) property.
Great post!

Did you see the simplified list?

Feminine noun endings

The majority of words that end in -e or -ion.

Except words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme (these endings often indicate masculine words).

Masculine noun endings

Most words with other endings are masculine.

You can also learn the ending of each word individually of course but I find that learning these masculine and feminine endings helps a lot.

I have a much simpler way to identify the vast majority of nouns as being masculine or feminine.

FEMININE: the great majority of words that end in -e or -ion.

Exceptions (usually): words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme

(For all other word endings: the great majority are masculine).

That’s it. As a French high school teacher, I teach my students the above simple rule, and they know this is a “high percentage” guess — (high
likelihood of being correct) — to use if they aren’t sure of the gender of a new noun. (Out of curiosity, just now I went through the vocab lists for my
French II textbook — and confirmed that the above rule correctly identifies 88.5% of the nouns from those lists as feminine vs. masculine.)

(NOTE: the endings for feminine words that you listed above follow this rule for the most part, without having to remember dozens of different
endings).