An Introduction To French Genders

 Above: "Un raton-laveur" (a racoon).

Today, let's talk about animals in general and animal genders specifically. You'll need to put aside everything you learned in biology for now because, for some reason, French speakers think of some animals as "all males" and others as "all females". I can only assume our ancestors had very poor observation skills.

Jokes aside, distinguishing male and female animals is not, in many cases, really important, so having a single word for both genders makes sense. And remember, animal names are just like any other noun in French; they are either masculine or feminine according to the sound and spelling of their ending. Therefore, as mad as it sounds, grammar (not biology!) dictates the "gender" of most animals in French.

As a rule of thumb, I'd say most animal names are masculine. I've listed some examples below, but it's just a random selection; otherwise we'll be here all night. Some names look and sound like the English ones, but when necessary, I underlined the little differences in the spelling to draw you attention to it.

On the other hand, common animals (like pets, farmed animals and some of the most famous exotic ones) often have separate names for the male and the female. Even though those names are (often) closely related, their pronunciation is slightly different. Make sure you stress that difference when you say it.

Males may have more than one name, especially if whether the animal has been castrated or not makes a difference.

Let's see some examples.

* not castrated

But "what about the all-female animals?" you might ask. Well, I'm glad you brought this subject up! Let me introduce you to 50 living beings that we always referred to as "she" in French. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

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It's not an exhaustive list, so I apologize if I forgot any important ones. It may seem like a lot to learn in one go, so determine which ones are the most relevant to you and start by learning those. You can learn 10 more next week, and so on.

By the way, owls with pointy "ears" are hiboux and are grammatically all males. I grew up thinking they (Mr. Hiboux and Mrs. Chouette) were an item, but found out later they weren't actually from the same species. It's a funny story, but if you think about it, our vocabulary can tell a lot about how we perceive the world. For example, butterflies and moths are seen as completely separate beings in English. In French, butterflies are papillons and moths are papillon de nuit so the latter is perceived as nocturnal type of butterfly. (It's not accurate, though. So perhaps we, French speakers, really genuinely suck at biology!)

But I digress. Revenons à nos moutons (literally it means "let's get back to our sheep" but would be better translated as "let's get back to business").

Now, you may wonder why it is so important to know the correct grammatical gender of animals. The reasons are manifold. Ignoring genders altogether:

• May immediately give the game away that you are an English speaker.     
• May be perceived as slightly misogynistic. Better not assume everything is male…
• May have a snowball effect. Making a mistake on the gender of a noun may lead to making multiple errors as nouns and adjectives need to be coordinated. For example :
  • Un chien blanc (a white dog) becomes une chienne blanche if we are talking about a female dog.
  • Ce petit lapin noir est trop mignon (this little black rabbit is too cute) becomes Cette petite lapine noire est trop mignonne. See how much impact it can have? Five mistakes in one sentence! Ouch!
• Verbs may also need to be coordinated, especially verbs using être in passé composé.
  • Le lion s'est échappé (The lion escaped) becomes La lionne s'est échappée. Granted, in this example, the difference is only in the spelling of the verb, but sometimes, it may impact the way it's said too, like in the next example.
  • Mon chat s'est assis sur mon clavier (My cat sat on my keyboard) becomes Ma chatte s'est assise sur mon clavier. Assis is pronounced [a-see] and assise [a- see-zuh] or [a-seez-] depending if you stress the last syllable or not.

On a side note, just before we conclude this, have you ever considered that animals might also have accents? For example, French dogs don't "woof", they "ouaf". And we may not all agree on what they say, but one thing is for sure: French birds don't "tweet".

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If you want to know more about this, may I suggest you a video on YouTube? It's a tacky but catchy little song. Your kids will certainly love it! Check it out here.

I hope you found this article useful. Don't forget to hit the like button if you enjoyed it!

Hero Image (Raccoon and flowers) by Tambako the Jaguar (CC BY-ND 2.0)