How to tell gender of a noun in French?

hi, JenA

The gender is part of the word.

If you know what "livre" means, you may be wrong:

LE livre = the book

LA livre = the pound

As soon as you consider the gender as part of the word, you'll start writing and learning them with their article.

About L': when the word starts with a vowel, you will have L', but you still have to learn the gender.

If it's easier for you, use UN and UNE to learn the genders for your vocabulary:

UN livre = a book

UNE livre = a pound

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Hope this helps!

GENERALY, it will have and E at the end if it is feminine and none at the end if it is masculine. You can also tell for sure. Le - masculine, la - feminine. L' is if it starts with a vowel or H. But really, its something you learn over lots and lots of time.

There are a few ways to tell, la is feminine, le is masculine and l' can be either, it is plural with a word such a dog (chien) it CAN be either. Looking at the ending you can see that if it is la chienne it is feminine because of the extra ending and the "la". Le chien is masculine due to the shorter ending and "le"

I once asked a French lady why certain words were masc or fem and she replied "Parce que c'est comme ça".

I can immediately think of an exception to the "ending in e" rule - Le Monde.

Sorry. It's largely something that you just have to memorize.

There are a few patterns that are not absolutely certain, but you can be confident enough of them to assume that, say, a noun with a certain ending is probably either masculine or feminine.

See below:

Honesty it's something that you just learn over time. When learning new words try to learn them their prefixes La, L' ,or Le. There is no real trick to learn when to use la or la you just get use to it as you expand your vocabulary. But for L' it is always followed by a vowel like: L'appartement

You have to learn them with the noun. A dictionary is very usefull if you dont know the gender.

you just have to memorize it. the usual way is to memorize the noun and its article together.

It is memorisation. You pick it up as you along.

I think if the word ends with "e" it is most likely feminine. Il est petit, Elle est petite.