These lessons have not focused on the peripheral elements of French such as the masculine and feminine ‘articles’ that are used to describe inanimate objects. Nor have we looked at the concepts of singular and plural in any great depth.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, their importance, particularly in verbal communication, is vastly overrated.
Secondly, and most importantly, it is the principal reason why many people give up trying to learn French in the first place. Mixing all the different subject areas, particularly masculine and feminine from the beginning is simply the wrong way to go about teaching French.
We obviously haven’t covered every aspect of the language, but you should feel confident enough now to work with the foundations of the language (the verbs) and build on that.
I also hope that we have covered enough ground in the areas of similar vocabulary in both languages to see that learning French is not such a great leap and it is worth sticking to. Enough said on that subject.
So, let’s take a brief look at masculine and feminine, and singular and plural, before we come to the end. Almost everybody is familiar with the French word(s) le and/or la.
‘Le’ is the masculine French equivalent of ‘The’ in English.
‘La’ is the feminine French equivalent of ‘The’ in English.
To begin with our first example of applying these masculine and feminine articles;
‘Porte’ is the French word for door. Because we live in a slightly more evolved society, we are aware that a door is inanimate, generally made out of wood and has nothing to do with the characteristics of either men or women. Our loveable French brethren however have decided that doors should have feminine characteristics attributed to them.
This is but one example of why the concepts of masculine and feminine are not covered at the beginning of this guide. I think you can see already that we are approaching the cutting edge of irrelevance here. Anyway, I digress. So, to say ‘The door’ in correct French you say ‘La porte’ (fem.) lu port and not ‘Le porte’ (masc.) le port.
Remember the point being made in the Introduction about the French themselves not caring whether you get these grammatical details right or not? You are probably starting to see why already.
To say ‘The doors’ (plural) we use ‘Les’ lay instead of La. This is the case regardless of whether the object we are talking about is masculine or feminine. Eg. Les portes. lay port
One point to remember when pronouncing the difference between singular and plural, the French add an ‘s’ on the end of the noun to signify plural in the same way we do. They don’t pronounce that ‘s’ however. This simply signifies plural in the written form.
The difference is in how we pronounce the article.
La porte lu port The door (one door)
Les portes lay port The doors (2 or more doors).
.
At this point it is worth inserting a couple of simple tables. Like working with verbs, everything will become much more apparent when we are able to see a pattern emerging.
masc. fem. masc. fem.
singular plural
Je mon ma mes
Tu ton ta tes
Il son sa ses
.
masc. fem. masc. fem.
singular plural
mine le mien la mienne les miens les miennes
yours le tien la tienne les tiens les tiennes
his/hers/theirs le sien la sienne les siens les siennes
mon/ma/mes - my
mon camion my truck
ma voiture my car
C’est a qui ce camion? Who’s truck is this?
C’est le mien It’s mine
.
ton/ta/tes your
le tien/la tienne yours
ton livre your book
ta chaise your chair
Ne touche pas cette chaise, c’est la mienne Don’t touch this chair, it’s mine.
.
son/sa/ses his/hers
son pere his/her father
sa mere his/her mother
C’est a qui ces livres? Who’s books are these?
Les siens His/Hers (indicating the person).
Le and La are what we call definite articles. THE being the equivalent definite article in English.
Indefinite articles in French are the masculine un and feminine une. The English equivalent is a as in 'a door'. One point to remember with indefinite articles in French, UN and UNE are the equivalent of A and AN in English. One way of remembering the difference definite and indefinite articles is being able to point to a definite object and saying; The door, the car, the building etc. An indefinite object is something that is just that, indefinite, possibly imaginary, a book, a house, a mountain, something that may or may not be present.
We have already covered how to signify plural when working with our verbs. Vous and Ils are used when referring to two or more people and ENT signifies plural at the end of a conjugated verb.
Examples;
Ils mangent chez nous ce soir il mon’zh shay noo say swar
They are eating at our place tonight.
In attributing masculine and feminine to inanimate objects, try to see the pattern in the following examples;
Un batiment (m.) A building
Une maison (f.) A house
Un camion (m.) A truck
Une voiture (f.) A car
Not every object that is large, heavy etc. will be masculine and some designations of masculine and feminine seem entirely arbitrary. An overall pattern can be seen however in the way that masculine and feminine articles have been attributed to many objects.
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