How do you know when to use DES or LES in French?
Grammar jargon: Les is the plural definite article; Des is the plural indefinite article. These articles are used with countable nouns (things you can count, like dogs, as opposed to mass nouns for things like milk which use partitive articles instead.)
What is the difference between Le and Les?
le, la and les are the french equivalents for the. As French makes a distinction between “masculine and feminine objects”, people use le for masculine things/persons and la for feminine things/persons. However, in the plural, only les is used whatever the gender is.
How do you know which article to use in French?
French has three different definite articles, which tell you that the noun is masculine, feminine, or plural. If the noun is singular, the article is le (for masculine nouns) or la (for feminine nouns). If the noun is plural, the article is les no matter what gender the noun is.
Why is French not gender neutral?
It’s spoken by almost 300 million people worldwide and whilst its Latin origins make the masculine le and feminine la essential requirements, the French language has a reputation for not being very gender neutral–there is no legally defined pronoun for ‘they’–and an emphasis is often placed on the masculine.
How many genders are there in French?
French adjectives therefore have four forms: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, and feminine plural.
What language has no gender?
No grammatical gender Certain language families, such as the Austronesian, Turkic and Uralic, Farsi language families, usually have no grammatical genders (see genderless language).
Why is there no gender in English?
A system of grammatical gender, whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine, or neuter, existed in Old English, but fell out of use during the Middle English period; therefore, Modern English largely does not have grammatical gender.
Is Turkish gender-neutral?
Gender. Turkish is a gender-neutral language except for a few sex-specific words (mostly naming professions or different sexes of livestock). The English third-person singular pronouns she, he, and it all correspond to a single Turkish pronoun, o.
What languages have genders?
Gendered languages, such as French and Spanish, Russian and Hindi, dictate that most nouns are male or female. For example, “the ball” is la pelota (female) in Spanish and le ballon (male) in French. In these languages, adjectives and verbs also change slightly depending on the gender of the noun.
Are French words gendered?
In French, pronouns, nouns, and adjectives reflect the gender of the object to which they refer. The language has no neutral grammatical gender. And there are many nouns (including those referring to professions) that don’t have feminine versions. So, a male minister is le ministre and a female minister is la ministre.
What are feminine words in French?
All the nouns ending in a double consonant + e are usually feminine. elle, enne, emme, esse, erre, ette… La pelle (shovel), une selle (saddle), la chaussette (the sock), la fillette (the little girl), La tristesse (sadness), la terre (earth), la femme (woman)…
Is French a feminine language?
French and most Romance languages sound feminine, but not Latin and Castilian Spanish.
What is the gender neutral pronoun in French?
iel
How do you talk to non binary?
It’s best to ask the person about their pronouns. Some non-binary people use gender-neutral pronouns (they/them/theirs), while others use alternate pronouns, or neopronouns (such as zie/zem/zer, pronounced Z), and still others are fine with using gendered pronouns like he/him/his or she/her/hers.
Are gendered languages sexist?
In one study, answering a survey about sexist attitudes in a language with grammatical gender (French or Spanish) was found to increase the reported sexist attitudes, compared to answering the same survey in English11.