Most countries are feminine and some are masculine

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on March 22, 2014 at 7:14pm

This has previously  been discussed  (about 3 years ago but I hope  it will still answer your question )

http://www.forum.french-linguistics.co.uk/forum/topics/how-do-we-ge...

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on March 22, 2014 at 10:05pm

Thanks George for the reply.

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on March 23, 2014 at 6:19pm

Let us look at India and Sri Lanka.

Both countries have 'a' at the end.  There should be a single gender for both countries.

It is not the case. Why is this?

India is feminine.                                   [  L'Inde ]

Sri Lanka is masucline.                       [   Le Sri Lanka ]

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on March 23, 2014 at 10:05pm

I am not quite sure what you mean .India and Sri Lanka do both end in "a"  but not in French.

I can't see what relevance their spelling in another language has to    what gender they have in the French language.                           

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on March 24, 2014 at 2:51pm

Thanks George

Yes, both ends in 'a'.

Therefore both countries should belong to a one gender.

It is not the case here. India is feminine wheras Sri Lanka is masculine.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on March 24, 2014 at 5:43pm

Well there are exceptions to every rule.

 

I still cannot see why you think "India" ends with an "a" in French. It is "l'Inde " and ends with an "e".

So it is normal to expect that it should be feminine since countries with names ending in "e" or "ie"  are normally feminine.

Le Sri Lanka  does not end in "e" or "ie" and so is less likely to be feminine and more likely to be masculine.

However I do not know the genders of all the different countries. and cannot say if an  county's name ending in "a" is always masculine.

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Permalink Reply by Charles D on March 24, 2014 at 12:20am

As to the United States:   'state' (l'etat) is masculine to begin with.  Les Etats-Unis is simply pluralizing the masculine.

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Permalink Reply by Vedas on March 24, 2014 at 9:48pm

Hello,

Il n'existe pas de règle absolue qui détermine le genre des noms de pays et l'article qu'il faut employer devant ces noms. Il faut consulter les dictionnaires et les encyclopédies pour trouver ce genre de renseignement.

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Permalink Reply by alan gould on March 25, 2014 at 11:15pm

I learned in my first year of French that there are only a few masculine countries.  They are Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Japan, Peru and Portugal.  I didn't learn Pakistan, but you're right about it.  I wouldn't know about the countries that emerged in the last 20 years.  But the total anyway is small, so it's easy to learn (and I just realized that all of N. America is masculine).     

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Permalink Reply by alan gould on March 26, 2014 at 12:07am

i just started thinking of countries that i think are masculine and a dictionary confirmed them: morocco, iraq, sudan, brazil.  i tried madagascar but it didn't give me a gender.  i guess french still goes by its old name of malagasy republic (Republique Malgache).  i didn't read the blurb on how the gender was determined, but i always thought almost all countries end in "e" which is soft and that "le mexique" is just an exception to that.    

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