French Gender Rules: The Complete Guide to le and la

Every French noun has a gender — masculine (le) or feminine (la). For native speakers this is instinctive. For learners, it’s one of the hardest parts of the language.

The good news: French gender is not random. Around 80% of nouns follow predictable patterns based on their ending. Learn the rules below and you’ll guess correctly most of the time.

The Big Rule: Endings Tell You the Gender

French gender patterns come down to word endings. Some endings are almost always masculine, others almost always feminine. Here are the most reliable ones.

Masculine Endings

Feminine Endings

The “-tion” Rule: Your Best Friend

If you learn only one rule, make it this one: words ending in -tion and -sion are almost always feminine. This covers a huge number of French nouns:

• la nation, la position, la solution, la passion, la tradition, la situation…

There are virtually no exceptions to this rule. Since many of these are cognates with English, you already know hundreds of feminine French words.

The “-age” Exception That Isn’t

You’ll often hear that “-age” words are masculine. This is true for the vast majority:

• le voyage, le fromage, le village, le message, le paysage

But there are a handful of exceptions: la page (the page), la plage (the beach), la cage (the cage), and l’image (the image). These are worth memorizing specifically because the pattern is otherwise so reliable.

What About l'?

When a noun starts with a vowel or silent h, both le and la contract to l’. You can’t tell the gender from the article alone:

• l’arbre (masculine — the tree)
• l’école (feminine — the school)
• l’homme (masculine — the man)

For these words, you need to memorize the gender or check the adjective agreement.

Memory Tricks That Actually Work

1. Learn the article with the word

Never learn “maison = house.” Learn “la maison = house.” Your brain will start to associate the sound of la maison as a unit.

2. Group by endings

Instead of memorizing individual genders, internalize the patterns. If you know -tion is feminine, you automatically know the gender of hundreds of words.

3. Use the cognate shortcut

Many French words look like English words and share the same gender pattern. Words ending in -tion are feminine in French just as they’re associated with feminine patterns in related languages.

4. Practice with flashcards

Seeing le or la hundreds of times builds instinct faster than memorizing rules. This is exactly what Accord is designed for — swipe through words and let the gender patterns sink in through repetition.

The Exceptions to Watch

Some common words break the rules:

• le silence — masculine despite the -ence ending
• le musée — masculine despite the -ée ending
• la peau — feminine despite the -eau ending
• la main — feminine (a very old word from Latin manus)

These exceptions are rare enough that they’re worth memorizing individually.

Start Practising

The fastest way to internalize French gender isn’t memorizing tables — it’s exposure. The more times you see le chat and la table, the more automatic it becomes.

Download Accord and swipe through hundreds of French nouns. Each card shows the article, the gender rule, and example sentences — so you learn the pattern, not just the answer.