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Gender of nouns

In French, all nouns have a grammatical gender, that is, they are masculine or feminine for the purposes of grammar only.

Most nouns that express entities with gender (people and animals) use both a feminine form and a masculine form, for example, the two words for "actor" in French are acteur (m) and actrice (f).

The nouns that express entities without gender (e.g., objects and abstract concepts) have only one form. This form can be masculine or feminine. For example, la voiture (the car) can only be feminine; le stylo (the pen) can only be masculine.

There are some nouns that express entities with gender for which there is only one form, which is used regardless of the actual gender of the entity, for example, the word for person; personne; is always feminine, even if the person is male, and the word for teacher; professeur; is always masculine even if the teacher is female.

With all that being said, there are three nouns in French where gender is altered when put in the plural form:

amour (un bel amour => des belles amours orgue délice

Gender of Nouns | Genre des Noms>

Examples

Masculine		Common Endings Used With Masculine Nouns:
le cheval	the horse	-age	le fromage the cheese
le chien	the dog	-r	le professeur the teacher
le livre	the book	-t	le chat the cat
le bruit	the noise	-isme	le capitalisme capitalism
Feminine		Common Endings Used With Feminine Nouns:
la colombe	the dove	-ie	la boulangerie the bakery
la chemise	the shirt	-ion	la nation the nation
la maison	the house	-ite/-ité	la fraternité brotherhood
la liberté	liberty	-nce	la balance the scales
		-nne -mme -lle	la fille the girl
			l’indienne the Indian

Unfortunately, there are many exceptions in French which can only be learned. There are even words that are spelled the same, but have a different meaning when masculine or feminine; for example, un livre (m) means a book, but une livre (f) means a pound! Some words that appear to be masculine (like la photo, which is actually short for la photographie) are in fact feminine, and vice versa. Then there are some that just don't make sense; la foi is feminine and means a belief, whereas le foie means liver. To help overcome this hurdle which many beginners find very difficult, be sure to learn the genders along with the words.

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Definite and indefinite articles

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The definite article

In English, the definite article is always “the”.

In French, the definite article is changed depending on the noun's:

1. Gender
2. Plurality
3. First letter of the word

There are three definite articles and an abbreviation. "Le" is used for masculine nouns, "La" is used for feminine nouns, "Les" is used for plural nouns (both masculine or feminine), and "L' " is used when the noun begins with a vowel or silent "h" (both masculine or feminine). It is similar to english, where "a" changes to "an" before a vowel.

The Definite Article | L'article défini>

singular	feminine	la	la fille	the daughter
	masculine	le	le fils	the son
singular, starting with a vowel sound		l’	l’enfant	the child
plural		les	les filles	the daughters
			les fils	the sons
			les enfants	the children

Note: Unlike English, the definite article is used to talk about something in a general sense, a general statement or feeling about an idea or thing.

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The indefinite article

In English, the indefinite articles are "a" and "an". "Some" is used as a plural article in English.

Again, indefinite articles in French take different forms depending on gender and plurality. The articles "Un" and "une" literally mean "one" in French.

The Indefinite Article | L'article indéfini>

singular	feminine	une	une fille	a daughter
	masculine	un	un fils	a son
plural		des	des filles	some daughters
			des fils1	some sons

¹"des fils" does mean "some sons" but is a homograph: it can also mean "some threads"

Also note that des, like les is used in French before plural nouns when no article is used in English. Let's imagine you are looking at photographs in an album. In English, we would say "I am looking at photographs." In French, you cannot say, "Je regarde photographies," you must tell which photographs you are looking at using an article. If you were looking at a set of specific pictures, you would say "Je regarde les photographies." ("I am looking at the photographs.") If you were just flipping through the album, looking at nothing in particular, you would say, "Je regard des photographies." ("I am looking at some photographs.")

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Subject pronouns

French has six different types of pronouns: the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person plural.

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1st person	singular	je	I
	plural	nous	we
2nd person	singular	tu	you
	plural	vous	you
3rd person	singular	il, elle, on	he, she, one
	plural	ils, elles	they (masculine) they (feminine)

When referring to more than one person in the 2nd person, “vous” must be used. When referring to a single person, “vous” or “tu” may be used depending on the situation; see notes in lesson 1.

In addition to the nuances between vous and tu, as discussed in lesson 1, French pronouns carry meanings that do not exist in English pronouns. The French third person "on" has several meanings, but most closely matches the now archaic English "one". While in English, "One must be very careful in French grammar" sounds old-fashioned, the French equivalent "On doit faire très attention à la grammaire française" is quite acceptable. Also, while the third person plural "they" has no gender in English, the French equivalents "ils" and "elles" do. However, when pronounced, they normally sound the same as "il" and "elle", so distinguishing the difference requires understanding of the various conjugations of the verbs following the pronoun. Also, if a group of people consists of both males and females, the male form is used, even if there is only one male in a group of thousands of females.

In everyday language, “on” is used, instead of “nous”, to express “we”; the verb is always used in the 3rd person singular. For example, to say "We (are) meeting at 7 o'clock", you could say either “On se rencontre au cinéma à sept heures.” (colloquial) or “Nous nous rencontrons au cinéma à sept heures.” (formal).