French gender is a constant headache for many students of French.

Why is manteaumasculine and montre feminine, when both men and women wear both of them? What's the logic behind gender in French? There's no simple answer to this question, and no simple way to know the gender of every noun other than just learning the gender with each word. There are, however, some patterns in suffixes and word endings - certain endings tend to indicate masculine nouns, while other endings favor feminine nouns. As you can see by the lists of exceptions, these gender patterns are not fool-proof, but they can help you to figure out the gender of many French nouns. Here are some suffixes that usually indicatemasculine nouns, as well as some important exceptions. -age Exceptions: la cage, une image, la nage, la page, la plage, la rage -b -ble Exceptions: une cible, une table, une fable, une table -c Exception: la fac (apocope of la facult) -cle Exception: une boucle -d -de Exceptions: la bride, la merde, la mthode, la pinde; -ade, -nde, -ude endings - Exceptions: la cl, la psych; s, t, and ti endings -eau Exceptions: l'eau, la peau -ge Exception: la Norvge -et -eur Note: this applies mainly to names of professions and mechanical/scientific things; also see -eur on the feminine endings page -f Exceptions: la soif, la clef, la nef -i Exceptions: la foi, la fourmi, la loi, la paroi -ing -isme -k -l -m Exception: la faim -me Exceptions: une alarme, une me, une arme, la cime, la coutume, la crme, l'cume, une nigme, une estime, une ferme, une firme, une forme, une larme, une plume, une rame, une rime, -mme ending

-ment Exception: une jument -n Exceptions: la faon, la fin, la leon, la main, la maman, la ranon; -son and -ion endings -o Exceptions: la dactylo, la dynamo, la libido, la mto, la moto, la steno (most of these areapocopes of longer feminine words) -oir -one -ou -p -r Exceptions: la chair, la cour, la cuiller, la mer, la tour (see feminine -eur) -s Exceptions: la brebis, la fois, une oasis, la souris, la vis -ste Exceptions: la liste, la modiste, la piste; names for people like un(e) artiste, un(e) nudiste, etc. -t Exceptions: la dent, la dot, la fort, la jument, la mort, la nuit, la part, la plupart -tre Exceptions: la fentre, une hutre, la lettre, la montre, la rencontre, la vitre -u Exceptions: l'eau, la peau, la tribu, la vertu -x Exceptions: la croix, la noix, la paix, la toux, la voix