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French is a Romance language that evolved from Vulgar Latin. It shares many common features with many other Romance languages.
Gender
French has retained two genders from Latin; masculine and feminine. Most neuter nouns in Latin become masculine in French, for example un musée (museum).
Declension
There is no "case system" as in Latin and some other languages. Nouns can have plurals, and when referring to a person, often a job, can have a feminine form.
Nouns don't always agree with the gender of their referent. Un docteur refers to 'a doctor' who could be male or female, except when in its sense meaning 'someone with a doctorate'—this would be une doctoresse for female referrents. Similarly, victime is always feminine, even when denoting someone male.
There are some "neologized" feminine forms that are disputed. Professeure (from professeur) and docteure (from docteur) are just two examples.
While many feminine forms can be created just be adding an -e, there are more rules:
Proper nouns
Proper nouns usually have genders, apart from cities which usually don't. France is feminine for example, and les États-Unis is masculine plural. This does not only apply to countries, but to most proper nouns. La Renault (the car) for example. Proper nouns, including given names and surnames are usually invariable and cannot be pluralized.
Some groups of words which are proper nouns in English are considered as common nouns in French. Languages, days and months, for example are always lowercase and uncountable common nouns:
Regular plurals
The regular plural of almost all nouns in French is formed by adding an -s to the singular form. Sometimes this is not possible, so the following plural forms are not generally considered irregular.
- The plural of nouns ending in -s, -x and -z is the same as the singular:
- However many nouns ending in -al and -ail form the plural with just an -s. These are not usually considered 'irregular':
Compound nouns
- Noun-noun combinations take an -s for both nouns
- Verb-noun combinations (wherein the noun may be singular or plural) are traditionally invariable
- however, since the spelling reforms of 1990 it is also acceptable to pluralize verb-noun combinations as if they were the noun alone
Irregular plurals
Borrowings from foreign languages
- Some Latin words retain their plural nominative plurals. This is much rarer than in English and can come over as old-fashioned:
- Some words borrowed from English retain their original plurals, such as words ending in -man or -woman:
- Plurals ending in -es or -ies in English:
- Some Italian words can have Italian plurals as well:
- As in English, sometimes the original plural noun is used as the singular, then another s is added:
Other irregular plurals
- Some highly irregular plurals include:
- A few words ending in -ou have the -oux plural:
- A few words ending in -au have the plural -aus:
Invariable nouns
- Invariable or invariant nouns are ones that have identical singular and plural forms. The following nouns are invariable because of their meaning or derivation rather than because they end in -s, -x or -z:
- Letters of the alphabet, not limited to the Latin Alphabet:
- But they can be pluralized if with an -s they have a second meaning: des delta (Greek letters) des deltas (river features)
- Proper nouns, usually given names and surnames: