Uneasy Rhetoric

Any native English speaker who has spent time learning French has no doubt struggled with the genders of nouns. Sadly, there is no overarching short-cut to learning them, other than always learning them with the vocabulary. However, there are generalizable rules, such as nouns ending in -tion are usually feminine.

I learned another general rule today:

Nouns which sound like they end in a consonant are frequently feminine (unless, spelled out, they actually end in a consonant). For example, voiture (car), ends in an “r” sound and is thus feminine. Sel (salt) actually ends in a consonant, so is masculine.

Nouns which end in a vowel sound are frequently masculine. For example, radio (do I have to translate it for you?) ends in an “oh” sound and is therefore masculine.

Of course, Le français breaks these rules with impunity. In fact, this rule came up while I was being corrected on the gender of “message.” It is masculine, even though it ends in a “zh” sound.

Update: Et pour les uns qui veulent savoir, les québécois utilisent “le condo,” selon Google. Peut-être les français aussi.