#ThomasNL (A2)
stark tinsel
winged orchid
It can be useful but now that it’s a general rule of thumb. The reason being that a lot of these endings are actually suffixes but if you didn’t know that you would be confused.
Essentially, we can make new words by having another word be affixed with a suffix. The first word in this paragraph, ‘essentially’ is an adverb made from the adjective ‘essential’ plus the adverbial suffix ‘-ly’. For French adverbs, for example, you take the feminine adjective and then add -ment: « essentiellement = essentielle + -ment ».
Articles like this will tell you, for example, that words ending in -age will be masculine save for exceptions like « plage » or « image ».
These aren’t exceptions, per se. Words like « village, garage, voisinage, numérotage » are masculine because they’re formed from the words « ville, gare, voisin, numéro » plus the masculine suffix -age. The -age in « plage, image » aren’t suffixes.
Memorising the ‘endings’ can help you in recognising gendered words more quickly but you should still memorise the whole word plus the article. The ‘ending’ would be a guide, not a definitive hint.
hollow sorrel
Ah thanks for the insights! I guess I'll try to find a way to practice this, also in context of actual examples
blazing brook
I'd generally recommend learning to have the instinct for it (and learning the word with either an article or clearly gendered adjective) as attempts to learn endings actually ruined a lot of my previous instinct for genders
-tion being feminine I find a useful one, though, as the only exceptions are rare enough that you're unlikely to encounter them
feral swan
if you do this for long enough you come up with your own rules https://reiwa.ca/p5.js/francais/
like i didn't realize that ence and ance words are almost always feminine until doing this but i will never forget it because i figured it out myself