gender of nations

[george willms]

As I understand it, nations ending in "e" are feminine, otherwise, masculine; (exceptions: Le Cambodge,  la Kiribati, le Mexique, la Nauru, le Zimbabwe).

Why do island nations take no article except when they're a group (les Philippines), (exception: la Jamaïque)? I think les Pay-Bas is the only plural nation that's not officially an island (although they have a few). But why do neither Isräel nor Monaco take an adjective, neither being an island? I hate having to say to my students, "that's just the way it is."

By the way, can anyone explain why some people say "the Yemen, the Ukraine, the Congo", etc. in English? Canada's full name is "The Dominion of Canada" so shouldn't it be "the Canada"?

[Neil Coffey]

Your first observation is true in essence, I think, though:

- I probably wouldn't counting "Zimbabwe" is an exception-- it's clearly not an -e as a "French ending", given that the -e is pronounced

- I think "Nauru" is usually used without an article-- I wonder how well established its gender even is

- Kiribati is generally treated as being masculine plural as far as I can see

- there are one or two other masculine countries ending in -e, e.g. Le Bélize, plus Le Mozambique and maybe one or two more African countries.

Now, re your second point, one theory has to do with how we conceptualise geography. Saying that these countries are used without an article is, on the other hand, effectively saying that their syntax is similar to the syntax used with names of towns and cities. Or put another way, we conceptualise them more as a "point" on a map than as a "surface". (Complication in saying the "syntax is similar": there is variation in usage of prepositions en vs à with some island nations, but not with towns/cities.)

Note that, to make matters worse, it's not 100% true that island nations take no article. Le Groenland behaves like the name of any other country (it's possibly one of the largest land masses and populations of an "island nation", which may explain this). You'll find variation in some cases, e.g. whether the article is used with Timor oriental.

Monaco is a city state, so in a sense is just following the usual syntax of a city. Israël is arguably unusual in how it is named (after a person, and relatively recently) which may account for why it doesn't follow "normal" syntax.

Most countries' official names are "(The) Republic/Kingdom/Principality/United States/some other spurious political entity of...", so by that logic you would end up using the article with all countries. I suspect it may have more to do with whether the article is used in the country's name in its native language (or with countries generally in that language), and again about people's geographical/political perceptions of those places . But different countries may well have different reasons for the article use.

[Neil Coffey]

P.S. "La Jamaïque" and one or two other small feminine islands is arguably behaving like town names that have articles, such as "La Haye".

[Neil Coffey]

P.P.S. I would encourage you not to bore your students tooo much with all the petty details of the article use/gender of the 200+ countries on the planet because in the 'difficult' cases, usage varies in any case-- if your students ever come up against the unlikely situation of needing to know current trends of French article use with "Kiribati", I would suggest they cross that bridge when they come to it and do a quick Google search on their iPhone...

[george willms]

My students are senior civil servants, some of whom travel a lot. They loved the lesson!

[george willms]

P.S. There is quite a lot of fluctuation here. Just heard that the French authorities have dropped the article from Bélize (!)

[Neil Coffey]

Haha -- ah OK, maybe they do unfortunately need to get bogged down in some of these petty details, then!

However, I would still say in that case, rather than going to much into all of the details, what might be more valuable to them is to show them examples of Google searches you can do to find out particular usages (e.g. searching for "au Timor oriental" vs "à Timor oriental" vs "en Timor oriental", and looking at the reported number of results and where they tend to be used -- maybe even looking at Google ngram too).