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.
