Memes

12 years of french in school but never figured it out

I’m native French and for the life of me I cannot articulate any rule in relation to why some nouns are masculine and others feminine. It looks completely arbitrary and I’ve just unquestioningly learned the gender of every word alongside the vocabulary itself.

There are even words where to this day I’m not sure I get it right (like “icône” which I use in the feminine)

PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Aviator, diver, ETH maxi, nexialist | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

That’s another nonsensical aspect of the language.

Interestingly, other variants of French (like that spoken in Belgium) makes more sense they’d call it “nonante neuf” (as in ninety [plus] nine).