Leçon Trois

This evening I reviewed lesson three of Living Language – Ultimate French and took the chapter test. I got a decent 28/33 correct.

This is not an easy chapter. The sections I found particularly difficult were 5. Gender of Countries and 6. Other Prepositions.

In fact, the gender rules for countries are pretty simple. If the country name ends in e it is feminine. If it ends in any other vowel or a consonant, it is masculine. But I guess my Spanish training is overriding my learning process here, for whatever reason. I want to say La Canada not Le Canada. It doesn’t help that there’s an exception to the rule (Le Mexique instead of La Mexique).

Usage for “other prepositions” is just confusing as it is presented here, at least. So we have:

• I am going to Germany – Je vais en Allemagne (because Allemagne is feminine).
  
• I am going to Luxembourg – Je vais au Luxembourg (because Luxembourg is masculine)
  
• I am going to the Antilles – Je vais aux Antilles (because Antilles is plural
  
• I am going to Paris – Je vais à Paris (because Paris is a city, at least that is the reason given. Gender of cities is not explained, if there is such a thing.)

But, they don’t explain things in the orderly way that I’ve done above. Instead, their examples are all over the place – Elles sont au Venezuela, Nous allons aux Antilles, etc. This obfuscates what’s being differentiated in the examples. I think this is one of those cases where a systematic set of similar examples, like I have listed above, would have been more pedagogical. I understand they wanted to give a variety of examples; but they should have taken up sufficient space to do so and still remain clear.

In any case, I reviewed my errors and I think I understand the mistakes that I made. Hopefully it will go better next time I run through this leçon.

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