Overcoming the gender bias in French!

It's got to be said, one of the most difficult task for any student of French is to try and guess the gender of a noun... which seems to be without rhyme or reason!!

In French, a chair (chaise) is female, but an armchair (fauteuil) is male - which is fair enough, if you consider the virile attributes of the said "fauteuil"...
But what about this: a shirt (chemise) is female, while a blouse (chemisier) is male!

A tie (cravate) - surely this has got to be male! -- Nope! la cravate it is!

I could go on forever with the strange list of oddities, which also goes as far as including countries, believe it or not: you may or may not be pleased to know that Ecosse is female (as is France incidentally), whereas Denmark, Mexico or Wales are decidedly male!

Having said that, statistically, the odds are in your favour: you only have a 50% chance of getting it wrong... (or if you care more for the glass half empty routine, 50% of getting it right!)

Besides, the French just love the little gender mistakes - why ever else is Jane Birkin so popular in the Hexagone? You would think that after over 40 years of living in France, she would have got the gender of table right by now! But no, she seems to have cultivated the gender bias to perfection!!

In any case, should you be interested in discovering simple rules, easy to memorise, about French gender, you need to look no further than this web page: it will increase your chances of getting it right tenfold!

Enjoy!!