There's a popular comedy series called The Guy Who Decides, which posits that the world's most inexplicable things are the way they are because a single man (who appears to be drunk) decided that they would be. It's funny - check it out.
But in France, there really is a Guy Who Decides - or at least a group of guys with the occasional woman - when it comes to French grammar.
Here's how it works.
Gender
As you will know, all nouns in French have a gender, and French learners need to know whether it is la table or le table. (It's la, table is feminine).
It might seem completely random but in fact there are some guidelines on whether a word will be masculine or feminine - and most of them are to do with how the word is spelled.
French grammar tips: Guessing the gender of nouns
In fact Canada's McGill university has come up with a formula that allows you to correctly guess the gender of a noun 80 percent of the time. The other 20 percent? Well, those are the exceptions and you'll just have to learn those.
Open up any French dictionary, and next to the nouns will be, in small type, nom masculin or nom feminine (often abbreviated to nm or nf).
New words
That's all very well for words that have been kicking around for centuries - but what about new words that have not made it into the dictionary yet?
When brand new words arrive, they tend to be used in spoken French first before making it onto the page - common examples include new slang terms that emerge from a specific community (often via art or music), new inventions/scientific concepts or words that are borrowed from another language, commonly English.
Spelling - as we mentioned, the biggest single factor in whether a word is masculine or feminine is how it is spelled - so if a new word has a classic feminine ending like 'ousse' or a classic masculine ending like 'ueil', then French-speakers will tend to naturally give it that gender when they talk.
Grammar rules - there are a couple of other rules around gender, for example nouns that derive from verbs - they usually end with eur, like l’aspirateur or l’ordinateur - are masculine.
But nouns that come from adjectives like la largeur, are feminine.
Because French people absorb these rules at school, they will generally tend to follow them when saying new words.
What is it - exactly what the thing is can in some cases matter too - for example Covid ended up being designated as feminine because it describes the illness, which in French is la maladie. Whereas coronavirus was masculine because it describes the virus itself, and in French that is un virus.
English words - it's not a rule exactly, but the many English words that have found their way into modern French tend to become masculine, especially the many business terms - think le coworking, le onboarding, le marketing etc.
Académie française
We mentioned the guys who decide? That would be the Académie française, the 'guardians' of the French language. They give regular pronouncements on the correct gender and usage of new words - probably their most high profile one being when they ruled that it is la Covid.
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They're famously not swayed by how people are are already using the language in daily life, and in fact they dedicate considerable energy to coming up with alternatives to modern creations in French, especially if they feel those creations are too obviously influenced by English.
The Académie is sometimes described as France's 'language police' but it has no enforcement status and people can and do ignore its pronouncements - if you ever try to use the Academie-approved 'l'access sans fils à internet' you will likely encounter nothing but blank stares, but everyone in France understands 'le wifi'.
Really the final arbiters of noun gender are the French dictionaries, the biggest of which are Larousse or Le Robert. Dictionary compilers will take into account an Academie ruling if there is one, but will also take into account the most widespread usage of the word and how it has appeared in media, scientific journals or songs.
Unsettled
And sometimes there is no final ruling.
During the Covid pandemic (a great time for new words appearing in the language, albeit a terrible time for most other things) debate raged over the new health pass - the document or app giving proof of vaccination that was required for entry into several buildings.
Four years on and there are still debates as to whether it should be pass sanitaire, as referred to on government documents, or passe sanitaire, as it is referred to by Larousse dictionary.
The phrase entered everyday use and media usage as masculine, and even Emmanuel Macron referred to it as le pass. In July 2021 the Académie presented arguments in favour of la passe (as feminine) but most media continued to use the masculine.
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