Is your country a man or a woman?

Those crazy French....what will they think of next? I learned tonight that not only do all objects have a gender--e.g. a car ("la voiture") is feminine whereas a pen ("le stylo") is masculine--but so individual countries. France, for example, is female....that's why you say, "Vive la France!" and not "Vive le France".



Fortunately, there are rules which help define which countries are masculine and which are feminine. All countries which end in the letter -e, generally speaking, are feminine. For example: la Chine (which is China). All countries which end in letters other than -e are then mascule. For example: le Perou (which is Peru). The United States (les Etats Units) are thankfully masculine, as the word for "state" (l'etat) is masculine.

But what good is any language if you don't pepper it full of hard-to-memorize and illogical exceptions to the rules? There are, of course, a few exceptions to the male-female country rule. For example, le Mexique (ends in -e, but yet strangely masculine) and le Zimbabwe (ends in -e, but spends its Sundays watching football games and drinking cheap beer) are some of the exceptions. Furthermore, there are countries which for whatever reason don't even merit a preceding article! I'm not sure what Cuba and Israel have done to deserve such shame, but neither of these countries has an article associated with it. In general, island countries (Chypre = Cypres; Malte = Malta) also don't have articles.