Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Nouns are the building blocks of any sentence you want to say, but before we start learning about French nouns, we need to learn about a little rule that is specific to French and romance languages: GENDERS

In English, a table is an "it." A car is an "it." A pizza is an "it."

In French, everything—and I mean everything—has a gender.

A pizza is a "She." A croissant is a "He." Your nose is masculine, but your mouth is feminine.

I know, it sounds crazy. Why does a table need a gender? Does it wear a dress? Don't try to find the logic. There is no biological reason why a moustache is feminine (une moustache) but lipstick is masculine (un rouge à lèvres). It’s just the music of the language.

The Tags: Le, La, Un, Une

Think of every noun in French as wearing a nametag. You never just learn the word "Table." You must learn the word with its tag. When practicing your flashcards soon, make sure you get the masculine and feminine tags correctly for each noun, this way it becomes natural with time.

The tags, in English every noun is referred to with A, An, or The,

ex. A bottle, the bread, an alien,

the same is true in French, and these ‘’tags’’ are what will help us figure out if a noun is of the masculine or feminine gender!

The Masculine Team:

• Un -> Un café (A coffee)
• Le -> Le café (The coffee)

The Feminine Team:

• Une -> Une pizza (A pizza)
• La -> La pizza (The pizza)