Just as an engine helps a car move, mastering basic grammar helps you express yourself and communicate your ideas clearly. The more you know about the engine parts, the more you can improve your engine’s capacity. Similarly, the more you know grammar, the better your French will be!
French grammar has the reputation of being boring and complicated, but it’s not so terrible. The main difficulties are the word genders and the conjugation system (shared by all Romance languages). It is just a matter of remembering some basic rules that will reduce your chances of making the most common French grammar mistakes. The most common one is gender.
In French, all nouns have a gender, either masculine or feminine.
A basic rule for nouns and gender, is that nouns ending in:
- -ance, –ence
- -ée (except le lycée, le musée)
- -eur (except le bonheur, le malheur)
- -ie
- -ion, -sion, -tion,
- -xion
- -té
- -ure
Noun genders, though a difficult concept, is unavoidable to learn! Getting the gender of a word wrong can lead to confusion or worse; completely give a different meaning to your sentence. Keep in mind that it is just a matter of learning and perseverance. Like a car engine, learn the parts and how to use them for a smooth ride!
