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masculin ou feminin = a lot of misunderstanding!


mint
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[quote user="NormanH"]I would call them an estate car....

[/quote]

You are right, I'd forgotten that term!  A hatchback does not have quite the same size boot as an estate car.......

So, if a break is an estate car, I don't think there is a French word for a hatchback!

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[quote user="EmilyA"]Le bastion is the only exception I know (because it isn't formed from a verb?)

Just out of interest what do people say for "van"? Camionette seems to get a bit of a blank look round here.....[/quote]

For van, we say camionette.  Don't know if there is a special word for a pick-up?

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My Granny used to talk about trips out on a charrerbang" or just a "charrer"!

With camionette I was trying to describe the vans that bring your on-line shopping in the UK. Perhaps the underlying concept was the problem....

I also tried to explain that my daughter's shopping arrives with Darren in the Strawberry Van, but gave up on that one fairly quickly.
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[quote user="NormanH"]http://www.lacentrale.fr/utilitaire-occasion-fourgon_moins_3_5_t.html

but that link came from search for camionnette

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camionnette

[/quote]

I still haven't seen what we call a "pick-up" because these vehicles do not have a covered back, just the "cab" is covered and the back with no roof has a large opening flap to enable easy loading.

Edit:  I mean these things [url]https://www.google.fr/search?q=nissan+pick+up&client=firefox-b-ab&biw=1588&bih=760&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR8OmP_ePOAhVlL8AKHRAGB14QsAQIHg&dpr=1[/url]

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[quote user="Gardian"]Mrs G maintains that if in doubt and it's something bad, then it's feminine.[/quote]Yes, this is a very useful rule which works well in the other direction too. 

Le silence is (almost uniquely amongst nouns in -ence) masculine;  because, as we were taught at school, women could not keep it…

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This just proves something one of my French friends once told me - when we were comparing the idiosycracies of English and French - French is not rational, at all!  And she was very highly educated, and knew her French very well - one of the few French I know with an actual library of books, albeit quite small, they were proper good quality books and not the usual rubbish you find -;).

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This link shows some of the 'rules' such as they are for gender, plus those odd cases where the same word has two different meanings according to whether it is masculine or feminine...

Le Livre or La Livre for example (book or pound)

manche, voile, moule, poêle and foi(e) are other examples

The weirdest are the ones that change gender in the plural

Un amour  but mes amours ratées

Un délice but des délices exceptionnelles

http://www.francaisfacile.com/exercices/exercice-francais-2/exercice-francais-3108.php

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Norman, I wish you hadn't mentioned that m word, moule.

I used the wrong gender with what could have been a catastrophic outcome but, fortunately, we were all a bunch of friends and we literally laughed until tears rolled down our cheeks and we fell about in our chairs and I am still reminded now and again what I'd said[:$]

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I just looked up the feminin noun form of moule in my colloquial dictionary, now I know what you are talking about [;-)]

The transitif verb form is also interesting:

 

Il vient de mouler son nana!

 

En mouler

 

And my favorite - mouler un bronze [:P] (laying a cable) [:D]

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