Nouns

Nouns are words that can generally fill the gap in the phrases one/three ________, his/her _______. A noun generally heads the subject of a sentence.

Examples of nouns in English include mouse, mice, enemy, beauty, suspicion, arrival, death. The words Mary, Paris and Tuesday can also be considered as nouns.

(Nouns collectively are often thought of as "naming words", although in use they often serve other functions. They frequently denote actions: his arrival was sudden. Many exclamations consist of nouns or noun phrases: hell!, Jesus!; mon oeil!.)

Nouns reflect number: they can be singular or plural, and their form generally changes to reflect this (one mouse; three mice). Sometimes the form of the noun does not reflect number, but the noun being singular or plural manifests itself elsewhere (the sheep needs a lot of care; the sheep need a lot of care).

Nouns in French

Number

Nouns in French can be singular or plural, as in English.

• By coincidence, nouns in the plural are generally spelt with an -s, as in English.
• Unlike English, this -s does not generally reflect a change in pronunciation. In other words, the singular and plural forms of nouns in French are generally pronounced identically.
• A noun's number affects the form of adjectives and determiners used with them. For example, leur ('their') is used with singular nouns, and leurs with plural nouns: leur père = 'their father'; leurs parents = 'their parents'.
• A noun's number also affects the form of the verb if that noun (or the phrase that it heads) is the subject of the verb: leur père travaille vs leurs parents travaillent ('their father works' vs 'their parents work').

Gender

Nouns in French are also marked for gender.

• Some nouns have both masculine and feminine variants, e.g. traducteur denotes a male translator, whilst traductrice denotes a female translator; Français denotes a French male, whilst Française denotes a French female.
• Other nouns are uniquely masculine or feminine but their gender reflects the gender of the person/animal they denote: garçon (boy) is masculine; fille (girl) is feminine.
• Other nouns, notably those denoting inanimate objects or abstract concepts, are arbitrarily masculine or feminine. For example, camion (lorry) is masculine, whilst voiture (car) is feminine; air (air) is masculine, whilst atmosphère (atmosphere) is feminine. In general, nouns with a particular ending tend to be a particular gender, e.g. nouns ending in -ure tend to be feminine (93% in this dictionary); nouns ending in -age are almost exclusively masculine (97% in this dictionary).
• There are a handful of nouns whose gender is not consistent (e.g. because they are rare or have an unusual form, and so speakers hesitate over their gender, or because their gender is subject to regional or ideolectal variation).
• A noun's gender affects which form of adjectives and determiners is used with them. For example, son (meaning 'his/hers') is used with masculine nouns (son frère = his/her brother), whilst sa is used with feminine nouns (sa soeur = his/her sister).

Common endings

As mentioned, nouns are commonly marked as plural by adding an -s in the spelling. Other regular pluralisations are listed below.

For nouns with both masculine and feminine forms, the feminine is often formed by adding -e. Other regular feminisations involve a transformation of the ending of the noun. Regular transformations are listed below.

Gender in a political context

English barely has different forms to denote different genders, and yet we still manage to have heated debates about issues such as the use of 'his'/'their'/'his or her', and find the need to invent terms such as 'chairperson' and 'fire fighter'. In French, gender and language use is an even more complex subject given, for example, that the names of many more job titles have potentially different masculine and feminine forms.