How to Learn Any Language 24
Gender
The Harry Lorayne method of remembering the gender of nouns in foreign languages makes you feel downright foolish for not having thought of it yourself!
In some languages you have to remember the gender of nouns in order to adjust the articles or the endings of the adjectives that go with them. All the Romance languages – Spanish, French, Italian, Protugese, Romanian, etc. – have masculine and feminine gender. Usually, but far from always, you can figure which is which by the word’s ending: o for masculine, a for feminine. French, however, conceals gender clues with noun endings as unrevealing as battlefield camouflage. German and Russian have masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. The Scandinavian languages call their two noun genders “common” and “neuter,” as does Dutch. Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Hungarian, and Finnish, like English, have no noun genders.
How do we remember whether the French noun for “train,” also spelled train, is le train (masculine) or la train (feminine)? It happens to be masculine, le train. Imagine not merely a train that has no women passengers, but a train that doesn’t allow women passengers! The men prefer it that way. In hot weather, when the air conditioning fails, they sit around in their underwear. Feminists are outraged, but the Supreme court keeps postponing the case. Men’s magazines litter the aisles. There are twice as many men’s
rooms as necessary because there are no ladies’ rooms. Once the train screeched to a halt between stations and an alarm sounded. It seems a band of militant women tried to board the train and hijack it. They were eventually beaten back, before the men in the club car even had to put their pants back on.
Le train; masculine.
The French word for “café” is le café; masculine. You could either confect another all male scenario for a café similar to the one you did for the train. Or imagine a masculine name emblazoned over the entrance – something like the Macho Café or the Rambo Café.
Le café; masculine.
“Hour” in French is l’heure; feminine. Occasionally you get a gift like this one. Heure is pronounced very much like her without the h.
L’heure; feminine.
“Nose” in French is le nez; masculine.
The members of which sex break their noses playing football and hockey, boxing, wrestling, and fighting with wise guys who insult their dates?
Le nez; masculine.
“Night” in French is la nuit; feminine.
Who ever heard of a “man of the night?”
La nuit; feminine.
“Ticket” in French is le billet; masculine.
Always look for opportunities to incorporate a memory hook for the gender as you capture the word itself. Billet is pronounced bee-yay, almost exactly like the letters B.A. as in Bachelor of Arts. If “bachelor” doesn’t have a sufficiently strong male connotation to you, imagine a giant male bumble bee buzzing around.
Le billet; masculine.
“Train station” in French is la gare; feminine.
Shall we imagine women waiting for their homebound commuting husbands at the train station? Not a good idea. You may forget whether the waiting women or the expected husbands are the star of the association. How about hundreds of women waiting for one man, pouncing upon him and fighting over him as he unsuspectingly steps off the train?
La gare; feminine.
“Church” in French is l’eglise; feminine.
Imagine an angry mob of French women storming a church in France, demanding that women be allowed into the Catholic priesthood.
L’eglise; feminine.
Let this one be a lesson to you. “Mustache” in French is la moustache; feminine!
Imagine the circus lady with a mustache, or a new French wine that causes women to grow mustaches, or a little girl asking her mother if she can ever have a mustache.
La moustache; feminine.
Some languages have neuter gender too. Try to come up with associations that suggest icy impersonality.
“House” in German is das Haus; neuter.
Imagine a house so cold and unappealing it couldn’t have possibly been graced by man or woman for years. No one lives there or would ever conceivably want to.
Das Haus; neuter.
“Pen” in Russian is pero, pronounced pee-RAW. What could be more sexless than a pea that’s raw?
Pero; neuter.