How To Remember Noun Gender In Any Language

Do you struggle to remember noun gender in languages like French or German? You're not the only one.

I recently got a question from Ali in Saudi Arabia who's been learning French for a year and a half and he asked for help with remembering the gender of French words.

I'm going to answer this question for all languages because the techniques for remembering noun gender are the same.

If you prefer watching videos to reading, hit play on the video version of this post at the top of this page. Otherwise, here's what you'll discover in this article:

Is There A Trick To Remembering Noun Gender?

Unfortunately, I would love to say that there's a trick and there's a little simple way of remembering what gender each noun is.

But unfortunately, noun genders are just one of those things that you have to learn on a case-by-case basis.

Whenever you learn a new word, the first thing you've got to ask is: what's the gender? And actually factor that into your studying. Think: how can I remember the gender?

Why Does Noun Gender Seem So Difficult At First?

At first, learning noun gender seems like an impossible task. French has got two genders; German's got three, so it's harder in German. The important thing is to keep going.

You have to always try to learn a word with the gender, but also just keep it up. What happens eventually is that when I speak languages now that have genders with their nouns, I just know instinctively what is what and which is which. You learn this instinctive knowledge.

It's like native speakers – they don't learn (well, I guess they might do when they're very young) but in general they just know instinctively that pain (bread) is masculine. It's just the way it is.

What If I Make Mistakes With Noun Gender?

As you go, you will make some mistakes. I still make mistakes with certain words and their genders in certain languages.

But the thing is, it never really matters as long as you've got the basic ones right – that's the important thing.

It is true that sometimes you hear people who are speaking a language like French and they make a lot of mistakes with basic words and their gender. You might hear someone saying le table instead of la table (table), or la pain instead of le pain (bread).

That doesn't sound good. It's still not the end of the world – you can still communicate – but I think you do need to make sure that you really get the basic everyday vocabulary right.

I'm sure you've got that by now, Ali. You've been learning for a year and a half. I'm sure you're good with your basic vocabulary. With the more difficult vocabulary, you will be forgiven. It's not the end of the world if you make a mistake.

Key Takeaway: “As long as you've got the basic ones right, that's the important thing. With the more difficult vocabulary, you will be forgiven.”

How Can I Use Memory Techniques For Noun Gender?

Having said that, it is important that you do try to remember the genders with the nouns.

Something that I do is I use a lot of mnemonics – little images and verbal tricks and things like that when I'm remembering a word.

What I try to do in some way is to try to bake in the gender to the image.

The Mnemonic Technique

Here's how it works: If I was learning beginner's French and I was learning la table (the table), I would try to imagine a feminine-looking table rather than a masculine-looking table.

I don't know what a feminine-looking table is, but you can imagine like a girl's dressing table or something like that, as opposed to a kind of workstation in a garage.

I'm using big gender stereotypes there, but the point is: whatever masculine or feminine means to you as relates to that object, try and bake that into the image somehow.

I do that and it helps me to actually remember later what the gender of the noun is.

Can You Guess Noun Gender Using Patterns?

Now, having said all that, in practice in most languages you can actually guess the gender of many words using not rules but generalisations.

I'll give you some examples here of kind of rules of thumb that you can use in French.

Masculine Patterns In French

Nouns that tend to be masculine:

• Words ending in -isme or -asm: le capitalisme (capitalism)
• Words ending in -é: le café (coffee)
• Words ending in -ment: le gouvernement (government)

Feminine Patterns In French

Nouns that tend to be feminine:

• Words ending in -té or -tie: la liberté (liberty), la sortie (exit)
• Words ending in -tion: la nation (nation)
• Words ending in -sion: la télévision (television)

Quick Reference: Common Noun Gender Patterns

Once you start to notice those patterns, that allows you to have an educated guess. It can be really helpful to look at those patterns and think to yourself: “Okay, these words that end in these certain combinations of letters tend to be masculine or feminine.”

It's not always the case, but if you can learn to recognise those patterns, then that will help you a lot.

What Happens When You Learn Multiple Languages?

It gets harder when you learn multiple languages, because certain words actually have different genders between different languages.

For example, if you take the word “planet”: in French, which is feminine – you get la planète. But in Spanish it's masculine – el planeta. Which is quite interesting.

When you learn multiple languages, it kind of gives you this extra layer of difficulty as you have to remember the genders from one language to the next. But again, these things almost never matter. The bigger picture is much more important.

Noun Gender FAQ

So What's The Bottom Line On Noun Gender?

I hope that's helpful for you, Ali. Really the answer is: lots of hard work and don't look for shortcuts. That's really the way to remember noun gender.

To summarise:

1. Learn gender with every new word – make it part of your study routine from day one
2. Keep going – you'll develop instinctive knowledge over time
3. Don't worry about mistakes – focus on getting the basic, everyday vocabulary right
4. Use mnemonics – bake the gender into your mental images
5. Learn the patterns – recognise common endings that indicate masculine or feminine
6. Stay motivated – some things in language learning you just have to put your head down and remember

The good news? It gets easier. You will develop that native-like instinct for noun gender. Just keep at it.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.