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Tour de France
It is 'la Franc'e.
We don't write 'le France'.
Why did they write ' Le Tour de France' ?
What is the reason for this greatest cycling event in the world to be a masculine object?
Everyday I look at the event on France 2 channel.
We don't write 'le France'.
Why did they write ' Le Tour de France' ?
What is the reason for this greatest cycling event in the world to be a masculine object?
Everyday I look at the event on France 2 channel.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on -
What is the reason for this greatest cycling event in the world to be a masculine object?
It's not.
It's "Le Tour de la France" in a shorter form.
I'll try to explain why later (don't have time right now).
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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on
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You may tell me when you find time.
I read it on France 2 channel. It was 'Le Tour de France'.
If you have France2 channel, you could see it.
I have TV5 and France 2 at home.
In order to improve my French standard, I badly need those channels.
My French is rotten.
The cycling event is on France 2 channel.
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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on
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It's really hard to explain. For me it's just obvious, since my native tongue is French, but I don't know how to explain it...
Here, "de" indicates the origin of the "tour". For instance:
C'est un vin de France = C'est un vin français.
"de" can have a lot of meanings in French, and in this case, it has the same meaning as "from" in English.
Je viens de Suisse. (I'm from Switzerland)
I realize that I'm not really explaining anything here, I'm sorry, because for me these sentences sound perfectly normal, so I don't know how to explain it. Maybe someone whose native tongue is English could explain it better, in my opinion. Anyone ?
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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on
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Generally, French speakers tend to drop the article before the country (i.e. say France instead of la France etc) when the preposition (de in this case) generally indicates location.
So compare:
Il est venu de France
Une réponse de la part de la France
In the second case, la France doesn't really indicate location as such: it's essentially a paraphrase of le peuple français ("the French people"). In such cases, speakers tend to keep the article.
You may get a similar opposition with:
un vin de France
la fierté de la France
Same opposition with à/en:
J'ai envoyé une lettre en France
(i.e. the letter physically travelled to the location that is "France")
Le premier ministre japonais a écrit une lettre à la France
(not physically to the territory, but to the people)
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Permalink Reply by Scott Dupuis on
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The "Le" in Le Tour de France is masculine because the word "Tour" in french is masculine.
The object in "Le Tour de France" is "le tour" therefore the "le" agrees w/ the gender of the word "tour". France in this case is not the object, it is more like an adjective. "France" in this case identifies the specific "tour" that is being talked about. Think of a sports event like the US Open. What Open is it? It's the US Open or maybe the French Open. Open is the object and US helps to distinguish one Open from another. For example, you could have a big bike race that tours around Italy: Le Tour d'Italie. Quel Tour? C'est Le Tour d'Italie. "Le tour" is the object and "Italie" identifies the specific tour. It doesn't matter what the gender is of the country or place where the tour takes place, "tour" in french is always masculine.
Hope that helps.
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The gender of a phrase is always the gender of the "head" noun. The gender of tour de France follows the gender of tour, which is masculine. (Another word tour, feminine, also exists, meaning tower.)
The gender of words is essentially arbitrary. Over time, words tend to "cluster" into genders based on sound patterns/endings, morphology (how the word is made up and how its form changes e.g. from singular to plural, nominative to accusative), and sometimes function or because of the gender of an implied noun (e.g. names of cars tend to be feminine even if you don't say the word voiture).
Genders for some reason also tend to be quite "stable" over time, even when the sound/ending that originally conditioned the gender is lost (there are very few words, for example, that have different genders in French vs Spanish[1], even though the corresponding endings, e.g. Spanish -ada vs French -ée, nowadays sound quite different).
[1] Notable exception: abstract nouns ending in -or (Spanish) and -eur (French), which for some rason became treated as feminine in French (valeur, chaleur etc) but are still treated as masculine in Spanish (valor, calor etc).
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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on
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I have some difficulty in understanding some sentences written by Neil.
J'ai envoyé une lettre en France.
I have sent a letter to France. OR I send a letter to France.
I have sent a letter to people of France OR I send a letter to people of France.
Le premier ministre japonais a écrit une lettre à la France.
The Japanese prime minister has written a letter in French.
The Japanese prime minister has written a letter to people of France.
Il est venu de France.
He has come from France. OR He came from France.
[ Il est venu means 'passé compose'. ]
Please correct my English sentences.
Some of them are wrong because I have difficulty in understanding the French sentences.
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