UNITÉ 1: LE GENRE DES NOMS Unité 1 Le Genre des Noms
Getting the idea of gender into our heads is not always the easiest thing to do. There is normally no gender attached to nouns in English, therefore saying things like “I love the house, she is very big” or “I adore this book, he is so interesting”, seems kind of strange to us. But this is what we need to do in French! Every noun has a gender in French and we need to know it in order to use the correct article before it, to be able to make it agree with an adjective, and so on.
If you look back over work your teacher has corrected, chances are that at least half the mistakes are things like:
• writing un when it should be une or vice-versa • using mon where it should have been ma or even mes • forgetting to make the adjective feminine if the noun is feminine • forgetting to add in an s to make either a noun or an adjective plural
These small mistakes are actually very common, more common than spelling a word incorrectly or just using the wrong word altogether. In this unit we will address these problems because the importance of gender cannot be overstressed. To start things off, do Ex. A to see if you remember the gender of the words listed.
A. Écrivez M si le nom est masculin et F si le nom est féminin. 1. chien
2. école
3. télévision 4. biologie 5. pomme
____ ____ ____ ____ ____
6. chat 7. table 8. oncle
____ ____ ____
9. géographie ____ 10. oignon
____
11. oiseau 12. café
13. professeur 14. français 15. chaussure
____ ____ ____ ____ ____
B. Remplissez les trous avec l’article ou l’adjectif possessif qui convient. 1. What are the French words for “the”? (i) ____________ (ii) ____________ (iii) ____________ (iv) ____________
2. What are the French words for “a/an” in the singular and “some/any when the noun is plural? (v) ____________ (vi) ____________ (vii) ____________
3. What are the French words for “my”, “your”, “his/her/its”? (viii) ____________ (ix) ____________ (x) ____________ (xi) ____________ (xii) ____________ (xiii) ____________ (xiv) ____________ (xv) ____________ (xvi) ____________
The answer to these questions depends on the gender of the noun. There are four words for “the”. The grammatical term for this is the definite article (article défini).
Definite articles
Masculine le
Feminine la
Before a vowel l’
Plural les
There are three indefinite articles (articles indéfinis) in French, the words for “a”, “an” or “some”. Indefinite articles
Masculine un
Feminine une
Plural des
7
16. mère 17. mer 18. stade 19. musée 20. club
____ ____ ____ ____ ____
Before moving on to the rules for gender, let’s check we know our articles and possessive adjectives. 1
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