Nouns in French are divided into two genders
While a chair does not have a sex, the word for chair, chaise, does have gender: it is feminine. Similarly, a book does not have a sex, but the word for book, livre, has gender: it is masculine.
You learn the gender when you learn the noun.
For most nouns, this is easily done if you learn the noun together with its definite article.
Le and la are the masculine and feminine forms of the definite article ("the" in English). These will be given to you by the Vocab Builder when you learn each noun, e.g. la chaise, le livre.
The garden in French is le jardin, whereas the house is la maison. So when you learn jardin, say it aloud as le jardin, not just jardin, and when you learn maison, say it aloud as la maison, not just maison. This will help you remember the article and the noun.
Some words do not begin with a consonant. In this case the vowel drops out of the le or la and the l is joined to the noun, with an apostrophe. For example, "the bird" is l'oiseau in French, so you need to specifically remember that the word is masculine.
Nouns beginning with h are a special case. The letter h is never pronounced at the beginning of a word. Despite this, some h words are treated as if they begin with a sounded h, and for nouns like this, the article is pronounced separately, e.g. la honte "shame" and la hâte "haste". Other h words are formally recognized as beginning with a silent h: they are said to have a "mute h". For nouns like this, the article is joined to the following noun, e.g. "the hotel" is l'hôtel in French.
The plural form of "the" is les for both masculine and feminine nouns. Adding an s to the singular form of a noun generally forms its plural. (When this is not the case, Vocab Builder help you learn the plural form.)
Adding an s to a noun does not change its pronunciation.
Some nouns can be cited under both a masculine and a feminine gender. In this case the spelling can be slightly different for masculine and feminine. Examples are:
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