Having been engrossed in the London Olympics, I could not help thinking of country names and their gender in French. Gender puts a lot of people off studying further but it shouldn't.There has already been a post about this in the blog, probably more than one. Sometimes, students forgive me and the rest of my nation for items to be "feminin" or "masculin" but giving a gender to countries is taking things a little bit too far!! Then comes the usual question "Is it really that important?" Yes, yes, yes, is the answer. Because only if you know the country's gender will you be able to say correctly you come from there, you are going there, etc.
So why would Italy be feminine and Portugal masculine? That is not the question! To make things easier, let's just say almost all countries finishing with an e are feminine. Of course there are exceptions: le Mexique being the hot favorite. Other countries are masculine.
When we mention any country, you have got to use le, la, les or l' in front of them.
ex: Italy is wonderful. L'Italie est magnifique.
When you want to say "in" or "to". (I am in/I am going to...)
ex: Je suis/ vais au Canada (masculine starting with a consonant)
Je vais en Azerbaijan.(masculine starting with a vowel)
Je vais en Espagne (feminine)
Je vais aux Etats Unis (plural)
When you want to say "from":
Ex: Je viend du Canada (masculine starting with a consonant)
Je viend d' Azerbaijan.(masculine starting with a vowel)
Je viens d'Espagne (feminine)
Je viend des Etats Unis (plural)
On this link, you will get more explanation on gender and "to" and "from".
On this link, you will find a list of countries , French into English and English into French.
Quiz yourself !
When else do we need to know the gender of a country? When we talk about it with an indefinite article (a or an)!!!
"Voulez-vous une France qui travaille ou une France qui sombre dans la récession ?"
Do you want a France that works or a France that sinks into recession?
And when you need to use an adjective to describe it:
"Douce France de mon enfance"
"Gentle France of my childhood"
This calls for a song: Douce France (Charles Trénet)
So , yes , I think the gender of countries is important!!!
