Gender of nouns in French

• A noun refers to a person, a thing or a concept.

• Person nouns describe people such as family members, job titles and words like ‘friend’.

• All nouns in French have a grammatical gender, either masculine or feminine.

• There are various ways to make a masculine person noun feminine.

A noun refers to a person, a thing or a concept.

A person noun describes people, such as family members, job titles and words like ‘friend’.

All French nouns have a grammatical gender. This means that each noun is either masculine or feminine.

Remember

The definite and indefinite articles in French (the words for the and a/an) are either masculine or feminine too.

The words in French for the and a/an (and some, when plural) are:

Certain person nouns change completely when describing a male or female person. For example:

Certain person nouns that are the same for males and females in English are significantly different in French.

For example:

Exam top tip

These irregular person nouns are listed separately in the GCSE vocabulary lists.

Make sure you learn both words so you can understand and use them in your exams.

There are four different ways of forming the feminine version of person nouns in French:

• Change the article (not the noun).

• Add e to the end of the masculine noun.

• Change -eur to -euse or -rice on the end of the noun.

• Change -en to -enne on the end of the noun.

For certain person nouns, you can indicate whether you are talking about a male or female person without changing the noun. You simply change the article from le/un to la/une. For example:

For certain person nouns, you add e to the masculine noun to make the feminine person noun.

For example:

Un ami – male friend

Une amie – female friend

With most person nouns that end in -eur, particularly job titles, you can change the masculine noun to a feminine noun by taking off the -eur and adding euse or rice.

For example:

Remember

Professeur (teacher) is an exception to this rule.

Le professeur – male teacher

La professeur – female teacher

However, it is more common to use le/la prof to mean ‘teacher’ in French.

If a masculine person noun ends in -en, you can make it feminine by simply adding ne to the end of the word.

For example:

le Canadien – male Canadian

la Canadienne – female Canadian

Practise what you've learned about gender of nouns with this quiz.

Certain person nouns that are the same for males and females in English are significantly different in French.

Here are some examples that are useful to know at Higher Tier:

Practise what you've learned about gender of nouns with this quiz for Higher Tier.

Watch the video for further information on the gender of nouns in French.

Now you’ve learned about gender of nouns, why not explore definite and indefinite articles in French?