Posted by amanda on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 6:54pm.
musee-feminine: you can tell because there are two e's at the end, one after the accent aigu.
The rest I am unsure. You can find out, though, by looking them up in a French dictionary. It will say "m" for mascqueline or "f" for feminine. The gender of nouns are randomly chosen. As a general rule, nouns with e's on the ends are feminine, however, not always. Sometimes, there is no logic into what gender a noun is. For example, a chair is feminine, and males use them equally as much as females. Even the words for jewelery can be mascqueline. As you learn a new word, try to learn its gender, and it will save you a lot of trouble in the long run. It is very difficult, even my French teacher needs to look up genders in the dictionary once in awhile. Bonne Chance!
Oops! Patti is right that when you are not sure, look it up! However "le musée" is masculine as are: le cinéma, and le stade.
The best thing to do is learn the article (le, la/un, une but l' will be more difficult) with the noun as you learn it. After a while you will begin to see patterns. Some nouns in French are BOTH masculine and feminine, to change the meaning. Example = le livre = the book BUT la livre = the pound.
Here are some suffixes that help determine the gender of some nouns:
Ending is usually
-age masculine Exceptions: une page
une nage une cage une plage une rage
une image
-eau masculine Exceptions: l'eau une peau
-ée feminine Exceptions: un lycée un musée
-ion feminine Exceptions: un lion
un scion un avion un million un billion
un bastion
-té feminine Exceptions: un comité un invité
Sra (aka Mme)
le musee, le cinema, le stade
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