Nouns: Gender and Plurals

Every French noun carries a grammatical gender: it is either masculine or feminine. This is not about meaning. A table (la table) is feminine and a book (le livre) is masculine simply because French assigns them that way.

Gender matters because the words around the noun must agree with it. The article and any adjective change to match:

Gender	Article + noun	With an adjective
Masculine	le livre (the book)	le petit livre (the small book)
Feminine	la maison (the house)	la petite maison (the small house)

Because gender controls so much, the best habit is to learn every new noun with its article: not table but la table, not livre but le livre. Guessing the gender later is far harder than learning it once.

Most noun endings point to one gender. These groups are worth memorising because they cover a large part of the vocabulary list.

Usually masculine:

Ending	Examples
-age	le fromage (cheese), le voyage (trip), le garage
-ment	le gouvernement (government), le moment
-eau	le bureau (office/desk), le château (castle)
-isme	le tourisme (tourism), le sport → le cyclisme

Usually feminine:

Ending	Examples
-tion/-sion	la nation (nation), la télévision (television)
-té	la santé (health), la beauté (beauty)
-ée	la journée (day), la matinée (morning)
-ette	la baguette, la fourchette (fork)
-ance/-ence	la chance (luck), la différence (difference)

These clues are strong but not absolute. Common exceptions include le musée (museum) and le lycée (sixth-form college), which end in -ée but are masculine, and la page and la plage (beach), which end in -age but are feminine.

Nouns for people usually have a masculine and a feminine form. The most common change is simply to add -e, but several endings have their own pattern.

Change	Masculine → Feminine	Meaning
add -e	un ami → une amie	a friend
add -e	un étudiant → une étudiante	a student
-eur → -euse	un chanteur → une chanteuse	a singer
-teur → -trice	un acteur → une actrice	an actor
-en → -enne	un lycéen → une lycéenne	a school pupil
-er → -ère	un boulanger → une boulangère	a baker

Some person nouns are invariable: they keep the same form and only the article changes.

Noun	Meaning
un/une élève	a pupil
un/une enfant	a child
un/une touriste	a tourist
un/une secrétaire	a secretary

To talk about more than one thing, make the noun plural. For most nouns you simply add -s, and the article becomes les (or des).

Singular	Plural	Meaning
le livre	les livres	the books
une voiture	des voitures	(some) cars
l'ami	les amis	the friends

The -s is silent in speech, so the article often does the work of showing plural out loud: le livre and les livres sound different mainly because of le versus les.

Worked example with agreement:

• le grand jardin → les grands jardins (the big gardens)
• la petite fille → les petites filles (the small girls)

Notice the adjective also takes a plural ending, so every part of the phrase agrees in number.

Some nouns do not simply add -s. These patterns are tested often, so learn them by heart.

Nouns ending in -eau or -eu add -x:

Singular	Plural	Meaning
le bateau	les bateaux	boats
le gâteau	les gâteaux	cakes
le jeu	les jeux	games
le cheveu	les cheveux	hairs

Most nouns ending in -al change to -aux:

Singular	Plural	Meaning
un animal	des animaux	animals
un cheval	des chevaux	horses
un journal	des journaux	newspapers

A few -al nouns just add -s: un festival → des festivals, un bal → des bals (dances).

Nouns ending in -s, -x or -z do not change: le fils → les fils (sons), la voix → les voix (voices), le nez → les nez (noses). A handful are fully irregular: un œil → des yeux (eyes) and monsieur → messieurs.

French builds new words from a base word using prefixes and suffixes. Recognising them helps you work out meaning in the Reading paper without a dictionary.

Pattern	Adds the sense of	Example
-tion/-ation	makes a noun, like English -tion	créer → la création (creation)
-ment	makes an adverb from a feminine adjective	lent → lente → lentement (slowly)
in-/im-	makes an opposite, like English un-/im-	possible → impossible, utile → inutile (useless)

Nouns ending in -tion and -ation are feminine (la création, la nation), which fits the gender rule from earlier in this lesson.

The adverb pattern (-ment) and articles (le/la/les, du/de la) each have their own lesson; here the key point is that spotting a familiar ending unlocks both the meaning and often the gender of a new word.

1. Guessing gender from the English word

Gender belongs to the French noun, not its meaning. Le livre is masculine and la personne is feminine whoever it refers to. Always learn the noun with le or la.

2. Trusting the ending blindly

The clues are strong but not perfect. Le musée and le lycée end in -ée yet are masculine; la page and la plage end in -age yet are feminine. Learn the common exceptions.

3. Adding -s to nouns that take -x

Nouns ending in -eau and -eu take -x, not -s: des gâteaux and des jeux, never des gâteaus or des jeus.

4. Forgetting that -al becomes -aux

Animal and cheval become animaux and chevaux in the plural. Writing animals or chevals is a clear error (except for the short -als list like festivals).

5. Not making the whole phrase agree

If the noun is plural and feminine, the article and the adjective must match: les petites maisons, never les petite maison or les petits maisons.