Heminway - French Nouns and Their Genders Up Close

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
French Nouns and Their Genders
Up Close

Annie Heminway Copyright 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-175397-5
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POLONIUS: Que lisez-vous l, monseigneur?
HAMLET: Des mots, des mots, des mots! William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, scene 2 This is not an ordinary book about words. The dismissive irony in Hamlets response is impressive, but we know that a word can kill, cause profound mental distress, destroy a love, demolish a career, undermine a friendship, and even start a war. A carefully chosen word, le mot juste, as we say in French, can make the difference between triumph and tragedy. In English, all we need to know is the word itself. In French, however, knowing just the word is not enough; if we want to avoid embarrassment, even danger, we must know the words gender, which is either feminine or masculine.

Everybody knows what a mousse is, but woe to the learner who, unaware of the correct gender (feminine), tells his French interlocutor about le mousse (masculine) that he just made, for that word means cabin boy. Learning the correct gender is not always easy, but this book, which includes many rules, tips, ideas, and suggestions, will be your trusty guide through the labyrinths of French genders. After you master the rules, you will be prepared to approach the mystery of gender, but you will also have to proceed as a poet, using your ear as well as your intuition, to identify the true being of a particular word in the melody of a French phrase. The magnificent, mysterious, enchanting world of French genders will open the door to the fascinating history of the French language. Without having to consult dusty volumes, you will discover that the modern French gender system came to us via numerous circuitous and dizzying paths, all the way from the dawn of time, when humans categorized all beings as either animate or inanimate, progressing, so to speak, to Latin and culminating in contemporary usage. Having lost the Latin neuter gender, French retained the feminine-masculine dichotomy.

This is an important fact. Please dont be fooled by those (this group includes some linguists and many pessimists) who claim that French genders are totally random, disconnected from reality, and almost impossible to learn. Going beyond the rules spelled out in this book, you will always be able to tap into your knowledge of history, mythology, and psychology. For example, in the light of the moons significance in certain mythologies, you will not be surprised by its feminine gender in French. The German poet Heinrich Heine always yearned for the natural femininity of the word moon, finding the masculine gender of the German word for the moon (der Mond) quite inappropriate. Delving further into the past, you will find that certain archetypal words, such as source and earth, have kept that ancient gender (feminine) in French.

The great French philosopher Gaston Bachelard loved to ponder the rich male-female dialectics of animus, which in Latin means rational mind, and anima, which means soul. When you think of the souls qualities, you will understand why French has kept the Latin feminine gender in one of its most beautiful and expressive words: me. In 1966, Jean-Luc Godard, a key director of French New Wave cinema, released his film Masculin, fminin. A movie about grammar? No, rather a movie about young people, sex, gender, and politics in France in the late 1960s. Masculin, fminin has become a cult film for English-speaking viewers, as there is no aspect of learning a foreign language that presents more difficulties than the question of gender. Why is that? Most languages have two types of gender: natural and grammatical.

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