French grammar tip: Don't get hung up on object gender
le vagin
). She tweets her big discovery and is re-tweeted by none other than French president's wife Brigitte Macron.
This joke is not funny for two reasons - the first is because every single language learner since time began has made it.
But we're language geeks not film critics, so in this article we're going to focus on the second reason why it isn't funny, and why Brigitte Macron would never retweet such an observation.
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It's because the gender of nouns is a grammatical construct that usually bears little resemblance to gender in the sense of men and women/male and female.
It's understandable that people whose heads are already bursting with the many complexities of the French language would search for short-cuts and assume that a noun like a vagina - intimately associated with the female body - would be a feminine noun. But it's not.
And this isn't a one-way street -
bite
, a
slang term for penis
(pronounced 'beet') is feminine.
In general, nouns only follow the gender of the object itself if they are describing something that is specifically male/female.
Un homme
- a man
Une femme
- a woman
Un garçon
- a boy
Une fille
- a girl
Une vache
- a cow
Un taureau
- a bull
Most of the time the object itself - for example a table - has no gender, but sometimes it might have a vague relationship to gender, such as gender-specific body parts, or descriptions such as 'a crowd of men'.
While there aren't in fact any hard-and-fast rules about what makes a noun masculine or feminine, the best indicator is spelling.
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A noun that ends with an 'e' is usually feminine (
apart from the exceptions
), hence why it is
la bite
.
And a noun that ends with a consonant is generally masculine (again, apart from the exceptions), hence
le vagin
.
Likewise 'a crowd of men' =
une foule d'hommes
. The word for crowd is feminine, regardless of who is in the crowd, because the word
foule
ends with an 'e'.
Like we said, there isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but linguists at Canada's MacGill university
have come up with a rule
that they reckon will help you get it right 80 percent of the time.
The other 20 percent? Well, you're just going to have to learn them - although native French speakers only get it right about 90 percent of the time. Even president Emmanuel Macron
got some wrong when tested here
.
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Which brings us back to Brigitte Macron - because French people are used to the concept of masculine and feminine being about nothing more than grammar, they don't usually see why it's funny to say
le vagin
.
As a former teacher, we can assume that Brigitte has a good grasp of grammar and wouldn't find this amusing - although she clearly doesn't bear any grudges with the Emily in Paris producers, as she went on to
make a cameo appearance
in a later season of the show.
Grammar tips
From agreeing adjectives to the subjunctive, French grammar can be fiendishly - some claim deliberately - complicated and almost all French learners have at one point despaired over ever getting it right.
People learn languages in different ways - some people prefer to just throw themselves into chatting, others like to have a textbook and some exercises. But the formal and structured nature of the French language means that if you want to become fluent - and if you need written French - then you are going to have to learn some grammar.
That's the purpose of our weekly series of French grammar tips and tricks - and you can also sign up to receive them as a newsletter.
The following tips are not intended as a substitute for formal classes or sweating over those verb tables (sadly, those are necessary for most people), but may be of some help to language learners.
They come from our own experiences of living and working in France, and as with
our popular French word of the Day feature
, we've tried to focus on examples that will be useful in everyday life.
Read more French grammar tips;
French grammar tips: Look out for the accent
French grammar tips: Cheat the future
Guessing the gender of nouns
The cheat's guide to the subjunctive
Understanding French place names
Getting the date and time right
Pay attention to your French friend's English mistakes
Which French grammar rules do you find most confusing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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