masculin ou feminin = a lot of misunderstanding!

[mint]

All learners of French would have found this a tricky problem, especially when you are in full flow and you suddenly stop, having to wrack your brain to try and remember whether something is masculine or feminine.

I have been reading this detective story and here is an example of how easy it is to misunderstand and how this cannot a problem in English![:P]

Some background, the detective, Adamsberg and his "sidekick" (imagine John Thaw and Dennis Waterman) were discussing the finding of a woman's body in the Seine.  The woman had only one shoe on and so the hunt became a sort of Cinderella story in reverse, that is, they had the woman but not the shoe.

Elle est avec le meurtrier, dit Adamsberg.

Qui? demanda Danglard

La chaussure.

In English, we'd say, it is with the murderer and nobody would have been in any doubt that what is meant is, of course, the shoe.

In French, "elle" could mean equally the murdered woman or the shoe as chaussure is feminine.

If anyone else can think of examples where this business of gender can cause confusion, I'd like to hear them.  And NO, please, the Olympics is over so no example of whether a runner is male or female, thanks![:P]

[NickP]

I keep on asking my French friends, yes I do have some, how come Le Rhone is Le and not La. They all just do the French shrug and say, Because that's the way it is. So they must be right, mustn't they?

[NormanH]

Not quite that but of course one of the principal difficulties for learners of French (or English if the student is French) is the way that his/hers/its is translated according to the gender and number  of the object and not the gender of the person owning it..

Her shoes 'ses chaussures'

Her jeans "son jean"  (because jeans in French are the singular masculin 'jean'

His shirt 'sa chemise'

On your original point I think that in fact French is often less confusing, since the gender and number of the thing referred to is clear.

In your example if the woman had lost both her shoes the phrase would be 

"Elles sont avec le meurtrier, dit Adamsberg.

[idun]

It's the things that start with a vowel, like eau.

Elle est chaude, but how can we tell if we don't know, as there is usually no indication of the gender as it is l'eau or a l'eau or aux eaux.

Which has just reminded me of this which shouldn't but does make me smile never the less:

A l'eau, c'est l'heure

A good french friend told me that if someone was beau et utile  it was feminine, but that does not work either.

[Chancer]

I get confused, or at least used to when someone was talking about a 3rd party as elle and I assume it is a woman but they are in fact referring to la personne

 

One time someone was steaming into me, sadly a regular occurrence and he kepy saying vous whereas being part of a club we would always tutoyer, I asked him why he was now vousvoying me and he said he was referring to effectively, the likes of me, vous le groupe de mardi. Thats not a masculin/feminin thing though.

 

 

[mint]

Must tell you, Norman, that my oldest French friend (that is the first person to become my friend after we moved to France, and not the most aged of my French friends!) likes to try practising his English on me.

He'd say strange things like Jean-Pierre and her wife...........and I'd smile.  Back then, you didn't have women marrying other women and calling their other halves their wives!

Of course, "her" wife would equate to sa femme so you can see why the French speaks such "funny" English![:D]

In the polar, the dead woman only had one shoe on and the other one was missing so, of course, the hero (though he was in fact a bit of an anti-hero) was able to confuse poor Danglard who, in these stories, was nearly always a bit the worse for wear[:)]

[Chancer]

Idun.

 

I was thinking of eau when I posted.

 

At the piscine I will get asked "alors, elle et bonne ou pas" eventually I realised they were talking about the water which I had thought was masculin (l'eau) yet we say un eau troublé what is that all about?

[woolybanana]

Put in a simpler way, though Norman (hate to admit it) is quite right, there has been a historic cock up in the way that the French language is described and taught. It boils down to the fact that noone in their right minds should ever describe a group of words as being masculine or feminine (or, in other cases, neutral) because it obviously causes confusion. Would have been much simpler either to have had Type A words, Type B words etc with no other connotation. Or, even better, get rid of 'la' and just have 'le' or vice versa, or simply tie them to nouns which are obviously male or female or have flexibility (eg la gendarme)

Broody silly academics just making the language more difficult to learn and less of a simple tool of communication

[idun]

Off the top of my head, I would either say that eau trouble was troubled waters as I would use it in english, and that may be quite wrong.

Or if say the actual water was not acting  or looking like normal, ie different colour or agitated, I would also say it.

[mint]

[quote user="idun"]It's the things that start with a vowel, like eau.

Elle est chaude, but how can we tell if we don't know, as there is usually no indication of the gender as it is l'eau or a l'eau or aux eaux.

Which has just reminded me of this which shouldn't but does make me smile never the less:

A l'eau, c'est l'heure

A good french friend told me that if someone was beau et utile  it was feminine, but that does not work either.

[/quote]

Id, you're going to make me regret starting this thread[I]

Yes, all those words starting with a vowel or h muet or h aspiré.  I had to learn l'eau by heart and also adresse because not only is it feminine but treated as masculine when you say "mon adress", it also only has ONE "d" instead of like our address with TWO d's.

Some things just have to be learnt by heart which isn't as easy when the memory, like most of the other faculties, is heading south.

[Loiseau]

I have a problem with "la victime" in crime reports - used even where the "victim" is a man.

"Un squelette" bothers me, too. "-ette" sounds such a feminine ending.

Le musée, but la fusée - they're having a laff, aren't they?!

Angela

[Chancer]

Le vagin.

I'll get me coat [:$]

[NormanH]

I don't think adresse is regarded as masculine..more that the mon is used to avoid the ugly glottal stop that would be there if you had the 2 'a's together...ma adresse, that is to say for euphony not for gender.

It stays feminine because you say mon ancienne adresse...

The same thing can happen when you have an adjective starting with an open vowel before a noun...the ma becomes mon for the same reason

mon autre voiture est une porsche

estime is another example:   la plus haute estime  but mon estime

[NormanH]

Le vagin

La verge

[mint]

Stop it now, svp!  I'm just learning to call people "trans" when I am unsure as to what gender they are!

At least fruit trees are all masculine, regardless of whether the fruit themselves are masculine or feminine.  So you have l'olivier, le figuier, le cerisier, le pommier, le citronnier, etc etc.

Can anyone think of any exceptions?

[Loiseau]

Well, I guess because UN arbre is masculine, that would be logical.

With cars, I always thought every make was feminine because "une voiture" is feminine. However, when some French friends mentioned "un Kangoo" recently, I took them up on it and asked why. They ummed and ahhed a bit, and finally said it must be because it was a model that was "un monospace".

Honestly, what hope have we foreigners got...?

[idun]

Learn by heart, trouble is that my heart isn't in it?

[Alan Zoff]

I have wondered how the gender is decided for a new word, particularly with scientific discoveries. Who makes the decision?

[Judith]

"un Kangoo"

maybe 'cos words of foreign origin are masculine?

I remember, to revert to Mint's original question a little while back, I had problems with "son" (can't quote, book long read, but it stuck in my mind) and it was impossible in the context to know whether it was his or hers ... just the way it was written.  Would be no problem in English as we alter the pronouns according to the sex ...  if I ever found out where I wrote it down, it was probably 8 years ago and a house move since, I'll copy it here.

[Al Rogers]

The "quote post" function doesn't seem to be working as seamlessly as it should, so this is in reply to the question: "I have wondered how the gender is decided for a new word, particularly with scientific discoveries. Who makes the decision?"

I remember reading years ago that new nouns would generally be classed as masculine in a belated attempt to simplify the language. I'm sure that plan went well.

[idun]

I asked french friends that same question years ago and they said that the Academie decided.

[NormanH]

Words that end in 'tion' are feminine as far as I know. No doubt some clever person will find an exception to prove me wrong [:P]

[mint]

[quote user="NormanH"]Words that end in 'tion' are feminine as far as I know. No doubt some clever person will find an exception to prove me wrong [:P]

[/quote]

NO exceptions for "tion" last time I looked but, words ending in "age" are mostly masculine but with many notable exceptions![:)]

[mint]

[quote user="Loiseau"]Well, I guess because UN arbre is masculine, that would be logical.

With cars, I always thought every make was feminine because "une voiture" is feminine. However, when some French friends mentioned "un Kangoo" recently, I took them up on it and asked why. They ummed and ahhed a bit, and finally said it must be because it was a model that was "un monospace".

Honestly, what hope have we foreigners got...?[/quote]

Loiseau, Eric knows about all these different marques et modeles.

For citroens (excuse me, too warm to load my programme for all the accents), une C4, C5 etc.

For Peugeot, une 404, 505, etc

But he did say that for Renault, UN kangoo is correct.

It might be because it is un monospace but I think that the gender is probably decided for ease of pronunciation.

By the way, are there still a type of car called a hatchback in English, a station wagon in American and un break in French?[:-))]

[NormanH]

I would call them an estate car....