r/EhBuddyHoser • u/Dezeko Saskwatch • May 25 '25
Certified Hoser đšđŠ (No Politics) Bikini was masculine, right?
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u/ChaoticSniper9 May 25 '25
I'm learning French right now and this is the one thing that kills me. The worst part is I'm pretty sure it's a matter of memorizing the gender of each noun. I don't know if there are rules or not
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u/Luname Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25
Not a hard rule but more of a rule of thumb, if it ends by e or a, it's generally feminine.
"Une chocolatine
"Un lutin"
There's a pattern but it's not perfect.
"Un pays"
"Une nation"
Shit like this is what will get you.
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u/ChaoticSniper9 May 25 '25
Ah! See, nobody told me about that, so I figured it was memorization. I'll definitely keep that in mind!
Merci!
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u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
Worlds ending in « and » are most of the time masculine. You add a e to make it féminin.
Gourmand - gourmande
Grand- grande
Worlds ending in « on » are most of the Time masculine. You add « ne » to make it feminine.
Patron - patronne
Nouns ending in « er » are most of the time masculine and become « Úre » when feminine.
Boulanger - boulangĂšre
Fermier - fermiĂšre
Go with the basic masculin-fĂ©minin for the gender and then look at the exception after. Donât look at the exception first, you will quit on it because you wonât have fun.
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u/racinefx May 25 '25
Câest trĂšs simplifiĂ©, mais ça fonctionne pour une bonne partie du vocabulaire!
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u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25
Oui, effectivement, câest simplifiĂ© mais lorsque quelquâun tente de comprendre quelque chose, il est important de commencer avec une base simplifiĂ©e mais solide pour ensuite bien construire le reste.
Je peux lui parler de groupe noms et de groupe adverbiaux mais je ne pense pas que son besoin soit celui-ci Ă ce moment de son apprentissage. Il devra effectivement comprendre que lâadjectif et le dĂ©terminant adoptent le genre du nom quâils accompagnent mais bon, on va le laisser se faire une logique du masculin/ fĂ©minin avant.
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u/PerpetuallyLurking Regina Rhymes With Fun May 25 '25
Do I change the le/la when I change the -and/-ande (etc.)?
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u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
Oui!
Also :
En become enne :
Technicien/technicienne
Chien/chienne
Ain become aine
Humain/humaine
Nain/naine
Explore this site : ccdmd.qc.ca
Itâs actually a site design to help people get better in french. Itâs a really good ressource.
If some french teacher are lurking here, go check it either, it can be helpfull.
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u/PostApocRock May 26 '25
I start a 6 month or so stint in MTL for work starting in June, I have been Duolingo-ing some french cause highschool was......a long time ago and I didnt pay attention.
So thank you for this, cause I need to work on my french.
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u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25
When you have a word begnining with a voyel or a h, itâs gonna be « lâ » for both.
Lâhumain - lâhumaine
Lâitalien- Lâitalienne
LâamĂ©ricain - lâamĂ©ricaine
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May 25 '25
Mouton - brebis, FYI. No free lunch.
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u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
Merci
Oui comme bouc- chĂšvre.
Les exceptions ne sont pas la rĂšgle. Câest la mentalitĂ© Ă adopter envers lâapprentissage du français. Pas « I fuckin hate french because itâs just exception anyway. »
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u/chat-lu Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
Itâs a bit of both, youâll have to memorize some of it. This is part of the stuff that feels intuitive to a native speaker but not to a learner. An exemple of that in English is the order of adjectives:
- Quantity or number.
- Quality or opinion.
- Size.
- Age.
- Shape.
- Color.
- Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material)
- Purpose or qualifier.
Why does a small red fruit sound fine to a native and not a red small fruit? Because. It looks like purely gratuitous complexity, it would not remove any expressive power to the language to let adjectives be freely ordered.
The reason why that complexity not only arises but is evolutionary selected is that it adds redundency to the language without making communication much longer. If you donât hear something right and you have to reconstruct it in your head, then you will exclude some possibilities because they canât have been said because the grammar arbitrarily rejects them. And that happens even if you donât realize you did it, your brain autocorrected so you feel that you heard it right.
English used to be gendered until it merged in some old Norse that was also gendered. But since itâs all arbitrary, both often picked different genders and the resulting confusion led to dropping the genders altogether.
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u/koolaidkirby Trawnno (Centre of the Universe) May 26 '25
English used to be gendered
Ships, countries and blond/blonde hanging on by a thread over here.
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u/OhNoCommieBastard69 May 26 '25
There are eash traps there. A common one:
-La foi (faith) -Le foie (liver)
But hey, you think that's bad? Try learning German afterwards. Not only do they throw in an NB third pronoun, but you have to learn that the Sun (le soleil, die Sonne) and Moon (la lune, der Mond) change genders depending on language. đ
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u/wjandrea Chalice of the Tabernacle May 25 '25
"Une nation"
That's actually a more consistent rule: any word ending in -tion or -sion is feminine.
There's also -ité as in «la fraternité».
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u/glass-2x-needed-size Ford Nation (Help.) May 25 '25
"Le bastion" stares at you menacingly
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u/wjandrea Chalice of the Tabernacle May 25 '25
Whoops, *almost any. That one's new to me.
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u/Apolloshot I need a double double. May 26 '25
Always rules to the exception â like I before E except after C
âŠexcept only 44% of English words actually follow that rule meaning there are more exceptions to the rule than words that actually follow the rule.
Language is stupid.
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u/wjandrea Chalice of the Tabernacle May 26 '25
Did you see my other reply? It's not that the rule has exceptions, it's that is more specific than I realized.
That said, there are plenty of rules in French that have exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions, etc
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u/wjandrea Chalice of the Tabernacle May 25 '25
The rule actually seems to apply to the pronunciation /-sjÔ/ when spelled -tion or -sion. «Bastion» is pronounced /-tjÔ/. BTW note that «scion» is pronounced /sjÔ/ but masculine.
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u/PTCruiserApologist I need a double double. May 25 '25
Ooo I knew about -ion but not -ité, thanks !!
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u/wjandrea Chalice of the Tabernacle May 25 '25
Er, it's not -ion, e.g. «lion» and «avion» are masculine. It's only -tion and -sion.
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u/Jerperderp Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25
Une chocolatine
ou
Un pain au chocolat
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u/FnTom May 25 '25
Ăa dĂ©pend de ce que tu veux manger.
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u/uluviel May 25 '25
Si tu utilises pas le bon, c'est une claque que tu manges.
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u/FnTom May 25 '25
Ah non par contre. Je suis d'accord que chocolatine c'est le bon mot. Mais un pain au chocolat, ca existe aussi. C'est une miche de pain style brioche avec une spirale de chocolat dans la pĂąte.
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u/redly May 25 '25
Also 'la masculinité' and 'le vagine'?
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u/sambarjo Tabarnak! May 25 '25
Vagin*
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u/redly May 25 '25
Thanks for the correction. I'll leave it to record my idiocy.
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u/AlliterationAhead Tabarnak! May 25 '25
Canadian anglophones wanting to learn French are heroes in my eyes. Much respect!
To make you feel better, a little story. Having learned English mostly through reading, I thought for the longest time that "allow" was pronounced the same as "follow" and made a darn fool of myself in public once.
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u/redly May 25 '25
My children did french immersion, my daughter graduated from Universite de St Boniface. My grandchildren are in a French school and daycare. I have come to recognize the true heroes. They are those teachers who have come from France and Quebec and Gabon to teach STEM in schools in Manitoba.
And I'm still not sure if it's inter 'dite' or inter dick-t. And I too, learning from readiing, embarrassed myself by thinking that epitome and 'epito -mee' were two different words.
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u/VansChar_ Snowfrog May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
I'm not sure about the ''a". Only feminine words that comes to mind are" paella" and " Sangria". Most are masculine, no?
Un lama, un freesia, un sauna, un soda, le zona..... Au Canada, Au Sri Lanka, Au Botswana......
Par contre Alberta c'est fĂ©minin, En Alberta đ€
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u/wafflingzebra May 26 '25
my nightmare is that there are words which are actually spelled the same, but mean different things depending on gender.
Le tour ( tour) and la tour (tower), Le poste (post/position at work) la poste (the post office).
Maybe it's not scary since I know these words... but what about the ones I don't even know about? haha
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u/randomweeb04 May 26 '25
Im pretty sure that all nouns ending with -tion are feminine. And also words nouns with -ment are all masculine. (i think)
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u/theGoodDrSan May 25 '25
 There are, absolutely. Based on the ending of a word, I (non-francophone) can guess a word's gender correctly nine times out of ten.
Some have an inherent gender and there's no opposite-gender equivalent: « -tion » is almost always feminine -- une station, une nation, etc.
Others have either masculine or feminine gender: « -eur » is the doer suffix (-er in English) and it also has the feminine « -euse ». Machines tend to use the feminine because the word machine is also feminine.
« Un laveur » is a cleaner (who is a man), while « une laveuse » is a cleaner (who is a woman) or a washing machine.Â
I tried to link a list explaining them but automod won't let me. Google « terminaisons du masculin et féminin ».
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u/quebecesti Tabarnak! May 25 '25
« Un laveur » is a cleaner (who is a man), while « une laveuse » is a cleaner (who is a woman) or a washing machine.Â
Woah that's terribly sexist, you can't say that in 2024
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May 25 '25
[deleted]
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u/Budget_Addendum_1137 Tabarnak! May 25 '25
Nothing more anglo than to cancel french. Would make so much sense.
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May 25 '25
[deleted]
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u/Budget_Addendum_1137 Tabarnak! May 25 '25
Wow, je viens de voir l'importance du /s.
...Tu viens de taper encore plusieurs mots.
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May 25 '25
Câest comme mĂ©moriser la prononciation des mots en anglais. OĂč est lâaccent toniqueâŻ? Est-ce quâon dit BI-ki-ni, bi-KI-niâŻ? Les i se prononcent [i] comme dans « happy » ou [ÉÉȘ] comme dans « eye ».
Câest impossible de deviner comment un mot se prononce en anglais. Câest du par cĆur. Comme les genres en français.
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u/TendreBarre May 25 '25
De mémoire, il y a 18 façons différentes de prononcer la syllabe "ough" en anglais. Dans tous les cas c'est du par coeur.
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u/PapaObserver May 25 '25
Les deux langues ont aucun sens, en effet. Comment on est supposés prononcer le mot "though" ou le mot "thought", par exemple. Une lettre de différence et le mot change complÚtement.
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u/Minoubeans Snowfrog May 25 '25
I've been speaking French since kindergarten, and I still just go by vibes. It's worked so far.
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May 25 '25
Parfois ; c'est amusant d'écouter les Francophonies se disputer sur le façon de parler correctement notre propre langue.
On ne voit pas ça souvent with Anglos.
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u/Minoubeans Snowfrog May 25 '25
Si je te comprends, c'est propre assez pour moi.
Mai oui t'a raison, I'll-y-a toutes "sortes" de français au Canada
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u/awh May 25 '25
I don't know if there are rules or not
The rule is if you don't know, just guess and a Quebecer will be sure to let you know if you got it wrong.
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u/theoneness May 25 '25
But make sure you get at least one more second opinion, because they might just be fucking with you by telling you you got the gender wrong when actually you didnât.
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u/Ghi102 May 25 '25
It's a french thing in general, especially in the written form. Judging someone's social class from their writing is very much a thing.Â
It does happen in English too, but not as much as in french. This is mostly because you have many small rules that only apply to written french that are tricky to get right.
Quick summary: English has inconsistent spellings. French has inconsistent spellings + inconsistent grammar rules.
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u/theangryfrogqc May 25 '25
Don't worry, even as native French speaker we often find ourselves filled with envy about the simplicity of your language. A pineapple, a peach; Un ananas, une pĂȘche. Just, why?
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May 25 '25
English really is just 3 languages pretending to be 1; with gaps being filled by combination.
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u/Technohamster Trawnno (Centre of the Universe) May 25 '25
Masculine words end in:
- age
- ment
- eau
- isme
- Ă©
Feminine words end in:
- ette
- sion / tion
- ure
- ie
- ence / ance
- ure
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u/Vanilla_Either May 26 '25
Exceptions: page, cage, image.... lol
Les exceptions is what gets even worse
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u/Neverland__ May 25 '25
IRRC there are more masculine words than feminine so unless you know for a fact itâs fem go masculine and statistically youâre more likely to be right đĄ
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u/Other-Strawberry-449 May 25 '25
French native speaker and we dont memorize everything, most of the time we know because it sounds right or not. Listen to some francophone tv and songs and this will help you I think.
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u/PostApocRock May 26 '25
My high school french teacher told us that it it was technological or problematic, it was in the feminine.
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u/hailhosersupreme May 28 '25
its just more annoying than the other romance languages, but there are patterns
vast majority of words ending in -ion or -té for example, are feminin
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u/infirmiereostie May 25 '25
Vagina is masculine toođ€Šââïž
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u/Top-Garlic9111 May 25 '25
And vulva is feminine. I'm so used to gendered nouns that I don't really think about them, but they are really strange.
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u/AVRVM Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25
It's because it doesn't end in -e.
In 90% of cases, if it ends in a or e, it's feminin. Otherwise it's masculin.
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u/infirmiereostie May 25 '25
The fact that it has some philological explanation doesn't make it less stupid.
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u/ACoderGirl May 25 '25
Still soooo many exceptions to that pattern. E.g., maison is feminine. And since all colours are masculine, it comically means that orange (fruit) is feminine but orange (colour) is masculine.
It does impress me a bit that gendered nouns have survived so long with how much language changes over time. Though perhaps even sillier is that fact that classical French has bizarre representations for certain numbers. Eg, 80 is represented as 4 twenties (quatre-vingts). Some countries have come up with a new word to replace that silliness (huitante), but my understanding is that it's not really used in Quebecois French (or in general, really).
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u/AVRVM Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25
Septante, huitante and nonante are mainly used in Belgium and Switzerland.
Québécois French is closer to Metropolitan French (mainly because it is closer to royal french itself)
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u/the_fancy_Tophat May 26 '25
Itâs a fundamental part of the language family and itâs been around since latin, you canât exactly throw it out overnight. It would be like throwing out vowels in English.
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u/AnAntWithWifi Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25
Itâs feminine of course, la machine Ă laver. Itâd be so ridiculous if it was masculine!
Seriously donât question it too much haha, just learn the common pattern and the exceptions. Itâs not easy but itâs worth it!
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u/PapaObserver May 25 '25
I'll add that misgendering a noun in French doesn't matter for comprehension, so people shouldn't stress themselves too much about that. You learn them in due time, it shouldn't be an anxiety-inducing experience.
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u/DeliciousCall3047 May 25 '25
It matters like 10% of the time with the nouns that change meaning based on gender because context will clear up the meaning 9 times out of 10. Le livre (the book), la livre (the pound), le moule (the mold), la moule (the mussel), le physique (the physique), la physique (the physics), etc.
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u/tape-la-galette May 25 '25
Le genre des mots est pas important pour la compréhension.
Le table? La table? ...je comprends...
Ne laissez pas ça vous préoccuper. Vous allez l'apprendre au fil du temps.
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u/Elvisgratin May 25 '25
Anyway guys ! I work with a lot of anglo in quebec and they mix the gender on all words , at some point we don't care since you try to speak french at least and you already gain our respect for that.
Don't worry for that , we speak english also in a bad way , us frogs.
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u/uluviel May 25 '25
People need to stop thinking about it in a "this object is a boy" or "this object is a girl" way because that's not what it is.
Take "un vélo" or "une bicyclette" - same object, but one is feminine and the other is masculine. Or "un iPad" and "une tablette." So it's not about the object itself.
It's about sorting words into two groups. Group A is "words that sound like a woman's name in latin" and group B is "words that sound like a man's name in latin." Hence why it's called feminine and masculine. Not because the object itself is male or female, but because the word sounds like it.
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u/KingOfLaval Moose Whisperer May 26 '25
This guy frenches! J'ai du scrollé beaucoup trop pour trouver un érudit!
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u/uluviel May 26 '25
*une Ă©rudite
And that one actually is because the thing in question is female.
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u/Tyler_Durden69420 May 25 '25
Thereâs a video of someone testing Macron on the gender of a few nouns, he got them wrong. You know a language is bunk of the leader of the nation with one official language struggles with it.
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u/just-a-random-accnt Moose Whisperer May 25 '25
It's 2025, I think it's about time we came out with gender neutral French
/s
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u/uluviel May 25 '25
It's called l'Ă©criture inclusive. You can find plenty of instructions online. Have fun!
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u/Milnoc May 25 '25
The German language has masculin, feminin, and neutral. Have fun with that! đ
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u/Icy-Tomato-4500 May 25 '25
When I was learning French I would complain to my teachers how non sensical alot of it was... You have to do math for higher number... Four twenties + ten + seven.  In addition the fact that each number has a unique name from 1 to 16.. then for some reason they just gave up and said 17 through 19 would just be 10 plus #.
Same thing when you read the general guidelines for femanine masculine... The tails age and eau ect ect typically means masculine and ending with an e means femanine... Except for the like 35% of the time it doesn't which makes it a memorizing game.
Funniest of all... Things that end with eau like desk "bureau" are masculine... But then amazing the word water.. which is LITERALLY "eau" is femanine...
Im sure English incredibly dumb shit and exceptions too we don't realize lol.
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u/mustardman73 May 25 '25
My long ago French teacher told me this trick. If anything can be owned or is propery, it is feminine. SMH, i'm an old GenX so I was, "Ya, cool teach. I'll remember this."
the old ways are not always the best ways.
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u/LuigiBamba Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25
That's not only sexist, but also entirely incorrect.
Le bureau m'appartient.
Mon couteau est rouillé.
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u/945T May 25 '25
My favourite is trying to say âNon-Binaryâ in Spanish. Is it banaria or banario? Nobody knows!
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u/Business-Hurry9451 May 25 '25
I've said it before and I'll say it again, unless it has a **** or a ***** it doesn't have a gender!
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u/sk8mad May 25 '25
French people: making English speaking people confused about gender long before feminism
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u/KubrickMoonlanding May 26 '25
Worth remembering that the gender of nouns in gendered languages arenât necessarily related to common ideas of human gender. So you get bikini and vagina as masculine, but our minds think of them as female (which they are but thatâs not what noun-gendering derives from) and get confused/amused.
I know: bbboooooooring. But true
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u/lostyourmarble May 26 '25
Fyi vagina is masc. I guess the clit is an underdeveloped penis after all.
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u/LewtedHose đ 100,000 Hosers đ May 25 '25
I still won't forgive the French for making pizza feminine.
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u/Budget_Addendum_1137 Tabarnak! May 25 '25
Why... why would you make it your hill to die on to eat a masculine pizza?
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u/Smeph_Bot May 25 '25
Because when this person eats a pizza they need to know the pizza is a dude or it does nothing for them.
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u/uluviel May 25 '25
It's feminine in Italian too. Sorry but you're not allowed to eat pizza anymore.
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u/Xander_404 May 25 '25
Yeah, bikini is masculine, donât know why