194: How do you remember the gender of nouns?

StoryLearning Podcast - A podcast by Olly Richards

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Ali asks: "How do you remember the gender of nouns?" Episode Summary: Unfortunately, noun genders just have to be remembered At first it seems like an impossible task, but keep going, and you will start to know instinctively which is which You will inevitably make some mistakes, but you will be forgiven! If you use mnemonics, try creating some way of visualising the gender of the word In practice, you can guess the gender of many words using generalised rules (see below) Interestingly, the gender of words can vary between romance languages. For example, "planet": la planète (Fr), el planeta (Es) Examples in French, taken from the French Your Way site: The following words are generally masculine: Nouns ending in “_sme” Example : le communisme, le capitalisme, le marasme Nouns ending in « _et » Examples : un ticket, un garçonnet Nouns ending in « _euil » Example : le cerfeuil (chervil), un écureuil, un fauteuil, un cerceuil (coffin) The following words are generally feminine: Nouns ending in « _tié” Examples: une amitié, la moitié, la pitié Nouns ending in « _ée » Examples: la journée, la soirée, une vallée, une fée (= fairy) Exceptions: words rerived from Greek, such as: le musée, le trophée, un scarabée, un lycée Nouns ending in “_tte” Examples : une bouillotte (a warm water bottle), une fourchette, une maisonnette, une fillette Exception :un squelette Resources Mentioned In Today's Episode: French Your Way - a helpful website about learning French!   Start Speaking Today: I’d like to thank iTalki for supporting the show. To claim your free lesson and start speaking today, visit: http://iwillteachyoualanguage.com/italkishownotes Do you have a question? Ask me your language learning questions by clicking here, and I’ll do my best to feature it on the show! Also, please subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the podcast! If you’ve got any comments about the show then please leave them in the “comments” section below! If you’d like to help me out, then I’d love it if you could… Share the episode using the social media buttons around you Leave an honest review and rating of the podcast on iTunes (click here to do that) iTunes reviews in particular really help the rankings of the podcast and help me to reach other aspiring language learners out there! See you in the next episode of the I Will Teach You A Language podcast!