I am very grateful to JJM who has answered my plea for information about what the French do with feminine nouns referring to masculine creatures (e.g. sentinelle, recrue) (see his note to “(s)he vs they”), and says that the French have less difficulty separating gender from sex than English speakers do.
Now comes the worrying part: Language Log reported last week that the French no longer agree on the genders of nouns: “Fifty-six native French speakers, asked to assign the gender of 93 masculine words, uniformly agreed on only 17 of them. Asked to assign the gender of 50 feminine words, they uniformly agreed only 1 of them”.
Does this mean that we foreigners can now ignore the problem, as we are likely to be “wrong” only as often as the native speakers?
3 Responses for "Gender in French"
We are of course still likely to be wrong much more often than native speakers.
We’ve always been able to ignore the gender problem, if we so wished. French speakers wince at our mistakes but they don’t have much trouble understanding.
Yes, the point is that the nouns in the survey were hardly a random sample! It wouldn’t be hard to find 100 nouns on which native speakers all agree 100%.
Interesting.
The reality of course is that native speakers (unlike language scientists and dedicated grammarians) generally don’t think about their language, they just use it. That means they tend to judge what is spoken by whether it “sounds right” or not. French gender is a good example and Adrian makes a good point about native speakers wincing.
Something like “ce maison” will be understood but it will clang in the ears of a native French speaker.
Although English does not have this gender accord feature, it is possible to approximate the effect using “this/these” (which, along with “that/those,” is one of the few examples where any kind of accord is demanded in English).
Say to any native English speaker “this children” and it will be understood but will induce some wincing because it just does not sound right. The effect is similar to my hearing “mon tante” in French!
While I’m at it, a fairly common French tendency (i.e., amongst native speakers) is to create accord where it is not actually necessary. For example, the number “quatre” is invariable, but you do hear things like “quatre-z-enfants” (vice “quatr’enfants”).
Sorry, I rambled on a bit there.
Leave a reply