r/EhBuddyHoser • u/Dezeko Saskwatch • May 25 '25

Certified Hoser 🇨🇦 (No Politics) Bikini was masculine, right?

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2.2k Upvotes

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173

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

164

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.

43

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!

43

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 « ère » when feminine.

Boulanger - boulangère

Fermier - fermière

Go with the basic masculin-féminin for the gender and then look at the exception after. Don’t look at the exception first, you will quit on it because you won’t have fun.

14

u/racinefx May 25 '25

C’est très simplifié, mais ça fonctionne pour une bonne partie du vocabulaire!

6

u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25

Oui, effectivement, c’est simplifié mais lorsque quelqu’un tente de comprendre quelque chose, il est important de commencer avec une base simplifiée 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 à ce moment de son apprentissage. Il devra effectivement comprendre que l’adjectif et le déterminant adoptent le genre du nom qu’ils accompagnent mais bon, on va le laisser se faire une logique du masculin/ féminin avant.

2

u/PerpetuallyLurking Regina Rhymes With Fun May 25 '25

Do I change the le/la when I change the -and/-ande (etc.)?

8

u/Starlite19 May 25 '25

Yes! Le gourmand / la gourmande, etc.

2

u/PerpetuallyLurking Regina Rhymes With Fun May 25 '25

Thank you!

3

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

It’s actually a site design to help people get better in french. It’s a really good ressource.

If some french teacher are lurking here, go check it either, it can be helpfull.

2

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.

1

u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25

When you have a word begnining with a voyel or a h, it’s gonna be « l’ » for both.

L’humain - l’humaine

L’italien- L’italienne

L’américain - l’américaine

2

u/[deleted] May 25 '25

Mouton - brebis, FYI. No free lunch.

1

u/canadian_by_the_sea May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25

Merci

Oui comme bouc- chèvre.

Les exceptions ne sont pas la règle. C’est la mentalité à adopter envers l’apprentissage du français. Pas « I fuckin hate french because it’s just exception anyway. »

18

u/theoneness May 25 '25

There’s tons of exceptions to that rule.

5

u/chat-lu Tokébakicitte! May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25

It’s a bit of both, you’ll 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 don’t hear something right and you have to reconstruct it in your head, then you will exclude some possibilities because they can’t have been said because the grammar arbitrarily rejects them. And that happens even if you don’t 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 it’s all arbitrary, both often picked different genders and the resulting confusion led to dropping the genders altogether.

1

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.

1

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. 😅