Surridge Marie. Le Ou La?: The Gender of French Nouns

Multilingual Matters, 1995. — ix, 86 pages. — (Modern Languages in Practice). — ISBN: 9780585171708.This book is intended to help students of French as a second language to discover the systems at work in the assignment of noun genders in French, and to develop effective methods for assigning genders correctly. It is directed towards the serious student at intermediate level or above (post-G CSE in Britain). It should also be able to meet the needs of people using French as a second language at an otherwise highly competent level, including many possessing degrees in French, who find gender assignment to be a persistent, virtually intractable problem. This difficulty is particularly acute for those whose native language (for example, English) does not possess a rigorous system of noun classification like that of French. However, even those whose own language has a gender system somewhat similar to that of French (for example, German speakers) are not exempt.Testing Your Gender Assignment Competence
Learning from Children about Learning Genders
The Great Divide: Semantic Versus Grammatical Gender
The Link between Gender and Phonetic Word Ending
Meaning and the Gender of Inanimate Nouns
The Role of Word Structure in Determining Gender
Biological or Sociological Gender: The Gender of Animate Nouns
Gender Makes the Difference: Distinguishing between Homophones
Seeing How the Network Operates
In Conclusion
A List of Frequent Nouns with Their Genders