Determining A Noun’s Gender In French With Jan’nah Allen
Is it Le or La? Un or une?
Are you sometimes confused about which one to use?
One of the hardest challenges, but a very important part of learning French, is determining a noun’s gender. Knowing the gender of a noun is essential for the use of pronouns, articles, and adjectives as well.
In this episode, Jan’nah Allen of The Noun Gender Academy shares a fascinating system to remember how to classify the gender of a noun in French easily. From learning how to solve her own problem, she is now teaching the solution she came up with over the years. With the purpose of helping English-speaking French learners, she studied and developed a way to simplify French noun gender concepts and build a strong foundation to speak French confidently.
Listen to this fun and full of value episode!
Today’s Guest
Jan’nah Allen is a French Coach at Noun Gender Academy
She helps English-speaking French learners who need French for employment or immigration opportunities, simplifies French noun gender concepts, and builds a strong foundation so that they can speak French without hesitation, doubt, or fear.
Her signature program, Noun Gender Academy, applies Noun Study principles to help English-speaking French learners achieve confident, competent French fluency so that they can access all the benefits and opportunities that French fluency has to offer.
Connect and learn more about Jan’nah here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parle_french_
Website: https://www.parlefrench.com
A special gift from Jan’nah for the French Formula listeners:
Guide to the container method: www.parlefrench.com/thefrenchformula
Key takeaways from the episode:
Nouns are the building blocks of any language, people, places, things, ideas. In French, French nouns are gendered, so we have to be technical about it.
The container method is a system of groups of information that helps us decide if a noun is masculine or feminine. It applies rules and exceptions that make it clearer than blanket statements.
The French language is so vast that they have nouns that are not in the English language.
Noun phrases are a string of words but still a noun.
When you have a compound noun or a noun phrase, you take the gender of the whole thing from the first noun.
Most of the nouns used in everyday language follow the gender of the rule. The exceptions are just there to solidify the rule.
The brain can store an infinite amount of knowledge as long as it is organized.
It’s not about memorization. It’s about clarity, simplicity, and vocabulary expansion.
Non-native French teachers bring so much value because they bring things that native speakers are not aware of.
