Ssbief (zebi)

[red fern]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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[gritty monolith]

That's the rule, actually, so I don't know why your textbook isn't saying anything on this. Refer to this:
https://francais.lingolia.com/en/grammar/nouns-and-articles/plural

[verbal heart]

Oohh I see thank youu. Also, I read the textbook again, turns out it did explain the rule😅 I kind of just skipped it😭. But it didn't say anything about this one:

Can you turn masculine adjectives with an f in the middle to feminine by changing the f to a v? Like natif -> natïve and actif -> active. Or is it just those adjectives? And adjectives that end in -eux and -eur can be turned feminine by changing the ending to -euse??

[gritty monolith]

native*, not natïve because the tréma wouldn't mean anything here, but yes

ex: « réseau passif, voix passive »

[verbal heart]

Ooh wait nevermind so it's adjectives ending in -f and you change it -ve?

[gritty monolith]

For -eux -> -euse, that's right, but for -eur that's a bit more complicated.
Feminisation of -eur depends whether it's -teur or not. For -teur, sometimes -trice – which is the old inherited feminine ending from Latin – (auteur -> autrice) is used but because that changes the pronunciation sometimes a simple -e suffices (auteur -> auteure). For regular -eur like « professeur », it can turn to -euse too (professeur -> professeuse) or a mute e can be added (professeur -> professeure)

[verbal heart]

Ooooohhh thankk youuu I guess it's just a matter of encountering and remembering the words with eur and how they change then😅

[gritty monolith]

It should be noted that -eur is used to make agent nouns, meaning that this new noun would be used for people doing something like 'professor' is profess + -or (professer + -eur) as in someone who professes (as in them professing their knowledge by teaching), and the majority of job titles have been masculine for the vast majority of French history so when modern standards started appearing with ideas of equality and the like, French historically kept titles masculine until recently and the governing body (l'Académie française) didn't really make up authoritative rulings on how to feminise job titles so people just did things either way

Because of that, feminisation may vary by country as each Francophone country did their own thing. The term « auteure » started out in Canada and spread through the Francophone world but in France, the Académie preferred « autrice »