1 – Bonjour et bienvenue!
Grammaire: 1.4 – Les substantifs
Un substantif = a noun
A noun is essentially a label for places, things, events, ideas, concepts and so on. Like English, nouns in French may be categorized as common or proper, count or mass, singular or plural. However, unlike English, French nouns are also categorized as either masculine or feminine.
1. Common vs. proper nouns
Common nouns in English and French are the generic term for something. Common nouns are never spelled with a capital letter unless they begin a sentence.
| un tatou | an armadillo |
Proper nouns are specific names and thus begin with capital letters.
| Tex et Tammy | Tex and Tammy |
2. singular vs. plural
All nouns in French and English are marked for number, that is, for singular (one) or plural (more than one). French, like English, usually indicates plurality by adding an -s to the end of the base form, the singular noun. Count nouns have both singular and plural forms:
| le tatou, les tatous | the armadillo, the armadillos |
Mass nouns typically have only a singular form. Try saying the plural forms of the following English mass nouns: sewage, mucus, plasma.
It sounds strange doesn’t it? This shows that it is difficult to pluralize a mass noun.
3. masculine vs. feminine
In English, grammatical gender is based on biology and is only relevant for pronouns (he, she, it) and possessive determiners (his, her, its). Gender in French, on the other hand, affects all nouns, pronouns, adjectives and articles. A noun’s gender is indicated by the article that precedes it. Masculine nouns are preceded by le and feminine nouns by la. The use of articles in French is more widespread than in English.
| le garçon | the boy |
| la fille | the girl |
Unlike English, the grammatical concept of gender in French has little to do with biological sex. Therefore, inanimate objects such as tables and desks are categorized as either masculine or feminine.
| la table (feminine) | the table |
| le bureau (masculine) | the desk |
Remember that gender in French, for the most part, is not about sex, but is simply an arbitrary category. The terms ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ really mean nothing more than ‘noun class A’ and ‘noun class B’. Because grammatical gender is fairly arbitrary, it is essential to memorize a noun’s gender along with its spelling and pronunciation.
