I can feel another of my rambling observations about the French language coming on. Please bear with me. In my last such post, I observed that there are far fewer words in French than in English. I have a few more choice examples to share with you today.

Take the word “pâte”. This versatile word can be “pasta”, “pastry”, “batter”, “cake mix”, or pretty much any sort of paste. Remember to always read the recipe carefully or you could end up making some very odd dishes!

One of my favourite examples of a word having multiple uses is “devoir”. Among its many translations, it means “have to”, “obliged to”, “must”, “need” and “duty”. But pluralise it and it becomes “les devoirs”, or “homework”. Another great one is the word “tache”. This covers a range of English words: “smudge”, “spot”, “mark”, “blemish”, “stain”… but it also means “task” or “chore”, which fits well with the theme.

Despite English being a richer language, it is in many ways far simpler. We ditched the formal/informal you/thou distinction around 200 years ago, and scrapped noun genders 300 years before that. Both of these concepts are integral to French, much to the exasperation of those trying to learn it. It wouldn’t be so bad, in the case of noun genders, if there were rules one could learn – ‘all fruits are feminine’, say.

Sadly, just as you think you’ve found one, you find exceptions that ruin it. Take methods of transport: “train”, “bateau”, “avion” are all masculine, but man’s principal vehicle, the car (“voiture”) is feminine. Things get far weirder when it comes to anatomy. The female reproductive organ in French is a masculine word. The proper word for the male organ is masculine too, but every other name for it (and, as with every language on Earth, there are many) is feminine. What that is about I cannot fathom.

Weirder still, there are words that have different meanings when you change their gender. For example, “un poêle” is a stove, but “une poêle” is a frying pan. Or take “livre”. In the masculine, it’s a book, but feminise it and you’re referencing the pound sterling. And be careful with “chèvre” as depending on your choice of “le” or “la”, you’re either talking about a goat, or about cheese.

The same confusion can arise with a simple change of accent – take the verb “pêcher” – to fish. Swap the accent circonflexe for an aigu and you get “pécher”, which means to sin. For added confusion, they are pronounced identically either way.

An even more bizarre case is love – “amour”. This is a masculine word… until pluralised, when it becomes feminine. There can be no earthly practical reason for this. I am convinced that the Academie Française just like to make things complicated. They are also to blame for irritating words like “oreille” and “adresse” which they insist are feminine, but because they start with a vowel, they take the masculine possessive. It’s hard to say “ma oreille” and “ma adresse”, so you say “mon oreille” and “mon adresse”, as if they were masculine words. Why they don’t just call them masculine words is anyone’s guess…