Kilo Lingo
French grammar Part of Chapter 2

CEFR A1-A2

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Test yourself (24 questions)

French Noun Gender: Le or La? The Endings That Tell You

By Michael McGettrickUpdated 11 October 2026

Every French noun is masculine or feminine: no neuter, no opting out. The noun rarely shows which, so the gender lives in the words around it. A few endings predict most genders, and one cheap habit, learning the article with the noun, covers the rest.

ClueMasculineFeminine
"the"
"a"
Adjective
"it"
Typical ending

Quick check

Now use it: three quick questions on the chart above. The full practice is further down.

Pick the right one

0/3

Choose the word that agrees with the noun's gender. chose (thing) is feminine, temps (time) is masculine.

  1. chose (the thing)

  2. temps (the time)

  3. bonne chose (a good thing)

What gender actually is

Gender is a sorting system French inherited from Latin. Every noun is in one of two classes, and the class sets the shape of the words around it.

masculinefeminineWhat do the colours mean?
FrenchEnglish
the thing
the time
a good thing
a good moment

It says nothing about the thing itself: a table is not feminine in any real sense ( , the table), and a book is not masculine ( , the book). Treat gender as part of the word, like its spelling.

  • the table the table
  • the book the book
  • the car the car
  • the bread the bread

The bad news: no Spanish-style cue

Spanish mostly marks gender on the noun: libro (book) ends in -o, casa (house) in -a. French wore those endings away. Its nouns look neutral:

  • - the thing
  • - the time
  • - the night
  • - the dog

Nothing in chose or tells you the class. The article does.

The good news: endings predict most genders

A handful of endings predict gender very reliably. Learn them once and thousands of nouns fall into place.

endings

EndingExampleEnglish
-tion the nation
-sion the television
-té freedom
-ence science
-ure the car
-ette the
-ée the day

endings

EndingExampleEnglish
-age the cheese
- the moment
- the office
-isme the mechanism
-oir the mirror

In a sentence: . - The television is small. . - The cheese is good.

The exceptions are short and famous. Learn them by name:

ExceptionDespiteEnglish
-the water
-the skin
-agethe beach
-agethe page
-agethe picture
-téthe summer
-téthe side
-encethe silence
-éethe museum

. - The water is cold. The feminine is the giveaway.

The core habit: learn the article WITH the noun

For nouns whose endings predict nothing, and the first hundred words of French are full of them, one strategy works: never learn, write or say a bare noun.

Not thisBut thisEnglish
chose the thing
the time
the book

Say the article aloud every time you practise. After a few dozen repetitions, sounds wrong to you the way a scissors sounds wrong in English.

People-nouns: gender usually follows the person

For people, grammatical gender mostly matches the person:

  • / - brother / sister
  • / - a friend (man / woman)
  • / étudiante - a student (man / woman)
A friendly family tree drawn on a big green tree: the grandmother and grandfather at the top; below them their son (the father) with the mother beside him, and the father's brother (the uncle); at the bottom, the parents' two children, a smiling girl with a sparkle and her younger brother.

For people, the article follows the person: every woman in the tree is la, every man le. L'oncle hides it, but the uncle is masculine.

A few keep one gender whoever they describe: Paul . - Paul is a kind person. And (a baby) is masculine, even for a girl. The full pattern for jobs and roles is on feminine person nouns.

Same word, two genders, two meanings

A few nouns exist in both genders with different meanings, which proves the article is part of the word:

MasculineFeminine
- the book - the pound
- the tour - the tower
- the job - the post office
- the way - fashion

So Eiffel is a tower, and France is a tour.

Why gender matters: everything downstream agrees

Gender is not trivia, because French copies it onto every word attached to the noun:

WordMasculineFeminine
Article / /
Adjective
Possessive
Pronoun . .

French has no separate it: and cover things too. ? . - Where's the car? It's here.

Get the gender right and all of these fall into place; get it wrong and the error echoes through the sentence. The adjective side is on French adjective agreement, the possessives on French possessive adjectives.

Mistakes English speakers make

WrongRightWhy
The adjective agrees too
Elision, and is
A famous -age
. . is always

What to do this week

  1. Say the article with every noun you know: , .
  2. Learn the six headline endings: -tion, -sion, -té feminine; -age, -ment, -eau masculine.
  3. Learn (feminine) by name. It is the exception everyone .

Practise: test yourself

Sort into groups

0/10

Masculine or feminine? Use the ending, and watch for the famous exceptions.

Tap a word, then the group it belongs in.

Pick the right one

0/6

Choose the word that agrees with the noun's gender. chose (thing) is feminine, temps (time) is masculine.

  1. chose (the thing)

  2. temps (the time)

  3. bonne chose (a good thing)

  4. chose (my thing)

  5. chose ? (which thing?)

  6. le temps (all the time)

Spot the mistake

0/4

Tap the word that has the wrong gender.

Translation drill

0/4

Translate into French. Pick the article and agreement that match chose (f) or temps (m).

  1. A good thing.

  2. It is a small thing.

  3. My thing and your thing.

  4. All the time.

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Practice worksheets and infographics

Practice worksheets with answer keys built in, plus infographic and listicle formats. Open any one to view, print or save.

Infographics

  1. Key points infographic
  2. Table 1
  3. What gender actually is
  4. The good news: endings predict most genders
  5. The good news: endings predict most genders
  6. The good news: endings predict most genders
  7. The core habit: learn the article WITH the noun
  8. Same word, two genders, two meanings
  9. Why gender matters: everything downstream agrees
  10. Mistakes English speakers make

Other formats

  1. Listicle

More grammar on this course

Frequently asked questions

Why do French nouns have gender?
French inherited grammatical gender from Latin, which sorted every noun into classes. The split is a grammar category, not a comment on the thing: nothing is feminine about a table ( table) or masculine about time ( ). The article, or , or , marks which class a noun is in.
How do I know if a French noun is or ?
Two tools. The ending: nouns in -tion, -sion or -té are almost always feminine ( , ), and nouns in -age, -ment or -eau almost always masculine ( , , ). And memory: for nouns whose endings predict nothing ( , ), learn the article as part of the word from the first meeting.
Does French have a gender cue like Spanish -o and -a?
Mostly not. Spanish usually marks gender on the noun: libro is masculine, casa feminine. French nouns usually look neutral: chose, , , table. The gender lives in the words around the noun instead, in the article ( ), the adjective ( ) and the pronoun (). That is why a French noun learned without its article is half a word.
What gender are nouns for people in French?
Usually the person's own: (brother), (sister), , . A few keep one gender whoever they describe: and are feminine even for a man, and is masculine even for a girl. Feminine job and role nouns have their own page.
Which French endings are always feminine?
None is completely exception-free, but -tion, -sion and -ette come close: , , . Next best are -té, -ence, -ure and -ée, each with famous masculine exceptions such as (summer), and . Treat them as strong bets.