Real, but slightly meta question: who decides the gender of new things? Like, who decided if cellphones, or AI, or computers are male or female? What is the gender of a dildo?
In general, most words follow certain patterns, for example words ending in -ion are always feminine, -age is always masculine, most words that end in a consonant that is not “n” are masculine (la mort evidently doesn’t follow these patterns). For most words using the wrong article sounds unnatural to the trained ear. Most new words are either derived from old words and keep their gender or they are picked up from other languages and adapted to French either by sound or by meaning (only works if there’s already a french word with the same or similar meaning). Sometimes it’s undecided, for example le covid and la covid are both acceptable, personally I think it should be le as it sounds more natural.
Real, but slightly meta question: who decides the gender of new things? Like, who decided if cellphones, or AI, or computers are male or female? What is the gender of a dildo?
In general, most words follow certain patterns, for example words ending in -ion are always feminine, -age is always masculine, most words that end in a consonant that is not “n” are masculine (la mort evidently doesn’t follow these patterns). For most words using the wrong article sounds unnatural to the trained ear. Most new words are either derived from old words and keep their gender or they are picked up from other languages and adapted to French either by sound or by meaning (only works if there’s already a french word with the same or similar meaning). Sometimes it’s undecided, for example le covid and la covid are both acceptable, personally I think it should be le as it sounds more natural.