French is a carefully crafted language. All of the rules and words are decided on by l’Académie française, the official authority on usage, vocabulary, and grammar. The result is a very structured language where all the parts are interconnected. These 7 beginner's tips will help you learn French grammar, building a solid foundation.

1. Gender matters. I mean it really matters.

French nouns have genders and the gender dictates which other words must be used with it. You can’t just say ‘the book’ or ‘the chair’ in French.You have to know the gender of the noun so you use the correct word for ‘the’. The book would be ‘le livre’, masculine, and the chair is ‘la chaise’, feminine.To help you out, here is list of word endings that will tell you whether a word is masculine or feminine. (Words with other endings just have to be memorized.)Masculine Endings Feminine Endings -age-ade-ment-ette-eau-sion-phone-stion-scope-ure-ence-ie

2. Un livre coûte une livre. Wait. What?

I was not kidding when I said gender matters. The sentence above means, A book costs one pound. Sometimes one word will mean two different things depending on its gender!

3. Can’t we all just get along?

Yes, we can! All of the words that modify a noun must agree in number and gender with it. All the words that replace a noun, like the word ‘it’, must agree in gender and number with it. These words all get along and this is one of the things that give French its beautiful sound.Take these sentences:L’homme heureux mange une pomme verte.The happy man eats a green apple.La femme heureuse mange un poivron vert.The happy woman eats a green pepper.Elle est verte. The apple is green.Il est vert. The pepper is green.The underlined words modify the noun that comes before them. We see that heureux is masculine and heureuse is feminine. And the masculine word green, vert, gets an -e added to the end to make it feminine.Likewise, in the second group, the masculine pepper is referred to with ‘he’ and the apple with ‘she’. And again, the word vert agrees in gender and number with the noun/pronoun..

4. Articles and nouns get along!

Articles go before French nouns. The gender of the noun dictates which form of each article must be used with it. Three important types of article in French are definite articles, indefinite articles, and partitive articles.Definite articles: le, la, l’, les translate to ‘the’ in English.Indefinite articles: un, une, des mean ‘a, an, some (more or less)’ in English.Partitive articles: du, de la, de l’, des are de + the definite article and mean a part of something. They all translate to ‘some’ in English.

5. Adjectives and nouns get along!

Adjectives describe the noun and have to agree with it in gender and number. With most adjectives, the gender is communicated by the ending. If a masculine adjective ends in a consonant, you typically add -e to the end to make it feminine. For example, the word petit (small) is masculine. If we want to make it feminine, we add an -e to make it petite. Other adjectives that follow this pattern are grand/grande (big), haut/haute (high), and fort/forte (strong).Here are some other gender specific endings:MasculineFeminine-il-ille-on-onne-s-sse-en-enne-eux-euse-eur-euse-f-ve-c-che-ou-olleAdjectives typically follow nouns. Mais, bien sûr, il y a une exception! A handful of adjectives come before the noun. Think of the word BANGS to help you remember which ones. Adjectives that refer to Beauty, Age, Number, Goodness, Size (and the adjective ‘autre’) all come before the noun. Examples: une belle ville (a beautiful city), un vieux chien (an old dog), le deuxième chapitre (the second chapter), une bonne idée (a good idea), and la grande maison (the big house).

6. Adverbs do not get along!

Adverbs modify verbs (which do not have gender) and so they do not have to agree. Many adverbs are made with adjectives, however. Adverbs can be made by taking the feminine form of the adjective and adding -ment to the end.Take the adjective heureux for example. We know the feminine form is heureuse. So we just stick -ment on the end of it to make an adverb. Heureusement means happily, or fortunately.So even though adverbs do not have to agree, you still have to know gender to make them. Oh la la! Quelle belle langue!

7. Regular vs. Irregular

It is important to understand that most of the language rules in French have exceptions! These exceptions to the rules are referred to as ‘irregular’ while those that do follow the rules are ‘regular’.For example, the adverb we made above, heureusement, is a regular adverb. It follows the rule, as most adverbs do. But there are some that are irregular and break this rule. The adjective for nice is gentille in the feminine, but the adverb for nicely is gentiment and NOT gentillement. This makes it irregular.