Le français

Not everybody has the privilege to work in international environment. I have the privilege to work in mainly French speaking environment having colleagues that appreciate my French mistakes and do correct me when I say something wrong. We all know that people do not always correct our mistakes maybe because they do not want to offend us, maybe because they just do not want to correct us or due to other causes even though we would love them to do so.

Let me make the story shorter. How to learn which gender is the appropriate word in French? I know, I know, English language does not know the genders of the words, but let us think about the genders of the words in other languages that know this issue:) French, Spanish, Italian, German, Slovenian, Croatian and even Dutch has something similar. But let us focus on French.

For all those who speak Slovene and would like to learn French; here is a hint about how to learn the genders of the words in French. Please note that this is not a rule, but merely my own observation (just for fun). The observation goes like this: If the word is of female gender in Slovene; then it is probably of male gender in French language and vice-versa. Let us look at the examples:

English - Slovene - French
f - female gender
m - male gender
n - neutral gender

A book - knjiga (f) - un livre (m)
A group - skupina (f) - un groupe (m)
A pillow - blazina (f) - un coussin (m)

A chair - stol (m) - une chaise (f)
A pool - bazen (m) - une piscine (f)
Sound - glas (m) - une voix (f)

A beer - pivo (n) - une bière (f)
A question - vprašanje (n) - un question (m)
A bicycle - kolo (n) - un vélo (m)

However and although it is still very interesting thinking of the word beer being of female gender, this does not apply always. Let us have a look at the examples below:

A door - vrata (f) - une porte (f)
A night - noč (f) - une nuit (f)
A flower- roža (f) - une rose (f), une fleur (f)
A step - korak (m) - un pas (m)
A day - dan (m) - un jour (m) (but "une journée" (f))
A glass - kozarec (m) - un verre (m)

To make the things more likeable I randomly picked 10 words from the French - Slovene dictionary to see if they were female or male. Here is the result:

A tip - napitnina (f) - un pourboire (m)
Surface - površina (f) - une surface (f)
A balance - tehtnica (f) - une balance (f)
Heat - vročina (f) - une chaleur (f)
A Secret - skrivnost (f) - un secret (m)
A List - seznam (m) - une liste (f)
A horn - rog (m) - une corne (f)
A bandit - razbojnik (m) - un brigand (m), un bandit (m)
A coat - plašč (m) - un manteau (m)
A circle - krog (m) - un cercle (m)

I guess the odds are 60:40.