French

is a romanic language, deriving from vulgar latin, and is the official language of France and its former colonial states.

Below are notes from my French studies.

The articles are based upon the feminine and the masculine, lacking the german neuter. Though it is complicated reasoned upon some switchings in these languages. The moon is ‘la lune’ in french and thus feminine, ‘der Mond’ in german is masculine.

Nevertheless, there are some basic structural rules which indicate wheter a noun is masculine or feminine based on its suffix.

masculine

-ment:  - le logement, un instrument
-age:   - le garage, le fromage
    - Exceptions: une image, la plage, la cage, la rage
- al:   - le cheval, le canal
- eau:  - le manteau, le tableau
- eu:   - le cheveu, le pneu, le neveu

All weekdays, months, seasons and trees are masculine, except fruits which are feminine. Exceptions: Le citron, un abricot -> the same for exotic fruits, par example le pampelmouse, le grapefruit.

feminine

-ie:    - la vie, la partie (but: *le* parti), la boulangerie
-tion:  - la nation, la station
-té:    - la beauté, la qualité

Controversies There is a major controversy about specific nouns and articles.

• the feminine form of auteur isnt auteure, but autrice.
• If one talks about a specific group of people, one might use ils/elles. A group of 100 women may be called by “elles”, but french grammar rules (i.e. ‘Le masculin l'importe) make the masculine more important, thus a group of 99 women and 1 man is referred with 'ils’. A good workaround might be by calling the group with the last mentioned subject in its gender.

Learning resources

Due to certain doubts about Duolingo as a company, its (commercial) strategies, and as a proprietary, semi-transparent learning platform I abandoned it after completing my 365 days streak.

Additional note

The inaccessibility of platform and expenses at that, plus the need for a school project, I decided to create Ikasketa, a learning platform, which is still in its concept phase. Beginning of development is to be expected in mid september 2019.

Alternatives:

I’m currently studying with multiple FOSS tools and books as long I do not have access to my own platform.

• Anki - a flashcard memorizing program - helpful, but also really heavy software.
• Anki Decks: Advanced French Grammar; French: 16000 sentences
• Literature: see reading list
• LanguageTransfer: French lessons
• (In german): Roland Rexer - Französisch - Ein Lernbegleiter für den Französischunterricht, Band 1, Diesterweg (a free and old grammar book I grabbed from a public bookshelf)