Masculin vs. feminin

adj. – masculine vs. feminine
The arbitrary association of masculine and feminine articles to objects makes French, among other languages, additionally confusing.

FBI, for example, is masculine where CIA is feminine. The reason is most likely because the FBI is a bureau, which is masculine and the CIA is an agency, which is feminine. But even the explanation is random.

Adding to the confusion, the French pronounce FBI the way we do where CIA is pronounced the French way. “I” in French sounds like “E” so FBI sounds just like we say it, but CIA becomes “SAY” “E” “AH.”

Other letters that are confusing are G and J since the former in French is pronounced as we would the latter and vice versa. Both have a soft pronunciation though vs. a hard one like we use.

Words are sometimes inverted in translation. For example, the United States becomes les Etas Unis and the UN becomes Nations Unis. In addition to having to simply memorize many of the rules of the words of the language, what takes me time to compute are the dates and time.

Where we put the month first, the French put the date first. Whenever each of the first two numbers are less than 12, I tend to get confused. 03/05/10 will still look like it should be March 5th and not May 3rd.

I am however getting better with the 24 hour time method. The way I keep it straight now is to subtract 2 from the last number of anything larger than 12. So I know 13h is 1pm, 14h, 2pm and so on. Otherwise, I look at the last number and think 13h should be 3pm, 14h should be 4pm, etc.

I like am and pm, but here there is no use for them if you talk in 24 hour cycles. It does make me feel like I’m in the military though. “Getting my hair cut at 16 hundred hours sir, yes sir!”

Pounds vs. kilos, miles vs. kilometers, feet vs. meters – these are all the weights and measurements one has to convert along with fahrenheit vs. celsius. Doubling the pounds approximates weight in kilos and when people talk in square meters, multiplying the number by 10 approximates it into feet. I get a bit more lost with kilometers and miles and forget about fahrenheit and celsius since there’s a much more complicated formula to that conversion that I still haven’t mastered.

Sizing here can be a bit tricky. The French on average aren’t built as large as the Americans. So a small in the US can be more the equivalent of a medium or even large in France in some cases. Sizing has always baffled me anyway as I think some manufacturers make a point to flatter you into thinking you’re smaller than you are where others do the exact opposite and make you feel like you don’t belong in their clothes in the first place. I never understood a size 0 – what if that’s too small, does it go into negatives from there?

I’ve stopped converting euros into dollars since it changes almost daily and given the recent weak dollar, it only depresses me. The only upside to our weak currency is that it’s lighter in weight as well. Here I’m traumatized if someone can’t give me a five euro bill back as change for a 10 instead giving me a handful of one and two euro coins. Five euros is the smallest denomination in paper. The coins are heavy and confusing since the two euro coins look similar if not slightly bigger than the one euro ones. In addition to centimes or pennies, there are also two centime coins on top of 10, 20 and 50 centime coins. So if you hate change, you’re in trouble here.

If you’re a little old school, you’ll still talk in francs and the value in francs is still listed on many receipts. If you’re really old school, you’ll talk in ancient francs at which point, you might as well be talking in Greek.

I did think I was onto something for a while because I realized that the articles for euros, centimes and even dollars were all masculine. Then I found out that a British pound, une livre, is feminine. So it’s back to the masculine/feminine drawing board. At least I should be thankful that in French unlike in German and Russian, there’s no third article that’s neuter. When it comes to gendered articles, two is already a crowd.