Andrew, in French, to me the other night at dinner. I screwed up by saying le table instead of la table. Like most (if not all?) romance languages, the French language has an assigned gender for every noun: masculine or feminine. For example, it’s la table (the table) but it’s le livre (the book). There seems to be no apparent reasoning behind the genders of objects. (Though, I’m not saying that there is no reason, but instead, that there doesn’t seem to be and no one has been able to explain to me otherwise). English is infinitely easier in this regard, having no grammatical genders for nouns.
French kids, when first learning to speak, learn nouns with an article attached to them. For example, it’s not just lit, but instead, le lit (the bed) or un lit (a bed). Having not spoken French for the majority of my life, it’s very hard to keep track of the genders of every single noun that I learn because I wasn’t trained to do so. It usually isn’t a big deal when a person screws up the gender, but sometimes words can be misinterpreted if you mix up the gender. For example, la banque (bank) and le banc (the bench) are pronounced the same, so if you accidentally mix up the gender and say “Où est le banque?” (Where is the bank?) because you need to withdraw some money, then you’ll be confused when they point you to a bench.
