How can you tell a French Noun’s Gender?

Making sense of the French nouns’ gender is one of the hardest parts of learning French, especially as an English speaker because you don’t have gendered nouns in your own language. You can’t speak French correctly if you don’t know the nouns’ genders, because these will affect the other words in the sentence: articles, adjectives and sometimes even verbs.

So, how do you know a noun’s gender?

The easiest way is to learn the noun’s article (le, la / un, une) alongside the noun when you learn it the first time. If you use a vocabulary notebook or flashcard system, like I recommend, you need to write the articles alongside the nouns in your notebook so you learn them together.

I recommend doing it from the start. If you don’t, you risk being stuck down the line and having to re-learn all those nouns, instead of learning new things. This is frustrating and time consuming, so if you can avoid it, great!
But what if you’re already there? What if you are now an intermediate student, and you haven’t learned from the start.

Good news! For over 13,000 nouns, you can guess the gender thanks to the ending!

I have specifically designed this video so that it is like a game. I will show you an ending and you can guess if it is masculine or feminine. Please keep track of how many you get right and leave a comment for me telling me your score.

Please don’t try to learn them all at once, it simply is not possible. Return to this video and play the game again, and post your score under your original comment each time so you can track your progress.

If you like this video, click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel. I make new videos regularly so you can learn all about French language & culture and how you too can become a French speaker.

Noun endings discussed in this video:

Masculine

é (le blé, le pré)

eur, teur (le chanteur)

ien (le chien)

ier, er (le cahier)

on (le patron)

age (le garage)

al (le cheval)

eau (le bateau)

ment (le document)

et (le ticket)

isme (le tourisme)

asme (le fantasme)

in (le cousin)

oir (le soir)

ail (le travail)

ing (le shampoing)

Feminine

té (la liberté)

euse (la danseuse)

trice (la traductrice)

ienne (la chienne)

iére, ére (la bouchére)

onne (la baronne)

ade (la pommade)

ance, ence (l’absence)

eresse (la chasseresse)

ée (la soirée)

elle (la sentinelle)

ette (la baguette)

ie (la librairie)

ine (la cousine)

ise (la surprise)

aille (la trouvaille)

ture (la voiture)

aison (la maison)

tion (la nation)

Is this helpful?

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One of your free gifts is the slides I used in this video. It’s perfect to review your gendered endings rapidly and commit them to memory.

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Your next steps

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