how do we get to know that a country is plural or feminine

[dhruv patel]

pls tell me that how do we come to know that a country is feminine or masculine

[Will Sheard]

Sheer bloody effort, my friend. :)

 

Most countries are feminine. If a country's name ends in -ie  (such as Roumanie, Italie, Australie, Somalie, etc.) it is feminine - e.g. la Roumanie.

 

Countries ending in -e are also mainly feminine: la France, l'Espagne (Spain), la Grèce (Greece), l'Inde (India), la Chine (China). Mexico is an exception: le Méxique.

 

All the -stan countries are masculine, as are Iran (l'Iran) and Iraq (l'Irak or l'Iraq). Some other important countries which are masculine:

 

Canada - le Canada

Japan - le Japon

Peru - le Pérou

Senegal - le Sénégal

 

Beware that Cuba does not take an article. Cities also take no article. For example:

 

Il va à México.

He is going to Mexico City.

 

Elles vont à Paris.

They go to Paris.

 

When talking about going to feminine countries, use en; for masculine countries use au:

 

Je suis allé en France.

I went to France.

 

Il veut aller au Canada.

He wants to go to Canada.

 

I hope all this helps. If in doubt, consult a dictionary.

 

Update: The United States of America is the only country you really need to worry about in terms of plurals. As État is a masculine word, it follows that les États-Unis (d'Amérique) is a masculine plural noun. Oh, you may also wish to say les Pays-Bas for the Netherlands (literally, the Low Countries). It too is masculine. I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

[Neil Coffey]

The observation about the lack of article with Cuba generally extends to islands that are countries (so à Taïwan, à Malte). Actual usage does vary slightly in practice (after all, do you think that all French speakers know precisely which countries are islands...?) So if you do a Google search, you'll actually find French speakers using forms such as au Cuba.

 

Another common-ish plural country is les Seychelles. For what it's worth, there are also a few countries whose "official" name is plural (and vice versa)-- e.g. officially, Mexico is the "United States of Mexico" (les États-Unis du Mexique).

 

[Ed la mouette]

The Google results about "au Cuba" refers to latino-style bars which are called Le Cuba Café, or Le Cuba Caliente, etc.

I failed to find any results about french speakers saying "je vais au Cuba" while refering to the island.

 

Not too far from Cuba, La Jamaïque takes an article. La République Dominicaine too... but not Haiti !

South of France, we have La Corse (Corsica). Un corse (a Corsican), le peuple corse, en Corse.

 

Speaking with the countries with a plural name, may i recall to you les Emirats Arabes Unis, masculine too.

 

[Neil Coffey]

Thanks Ed-- Haïti is another excellent example of an island country that I shouldn't have forgot!

 

Your point about "au Cuba" is good too -- I should have mentioned that there are "metalinguistic" uses of country names that can override the usual use of articles. I think there are some "genuine" cases (e.g. people describing their holiday in blogs)-- obviously with the complication without spending a long time looking that it's not always clear what country their from, if they're a native speaker of French, if it's a machine translation, if it's just a typo...

 

With an example sentence like this, for example:

 

La part des dépenses de santé sont-elles importantes au Malte ?

 

on closer inspection, it's from some kind of encyclopedia/database, and so the sentence could have been computer-generated from a list of countries.

 

So maybe there's not really as much variation as I thought!

[Ed la mouette]

The website from which you extracted this example seems doubtful to me :

• La part du secteur primaire dans le PIB de Malte , est-elle importante ? (useless comma)
• Le PIB Malte (produit intérieur brut) est-il l'un des plus importants d' Europe ? (adjective based on country names are not capitalized in french) 
• Le secteur secondaire maltais ( transformation des matières premières) est-il rattrapé par le secteur tertiaire (les services) en Malte ? (repetition maltais/Malte, and we say "à Malte") 
• Les importations et les exportations maltaise s sont-elles équilibrées ? (useless space in maltaises) 
• Les dépenses de santé du territoire de Malte elles-aussi importantes que celles des pays de l' Europe ? (elles-aussi ? -> sont-elles aussi)

 

And in particular :

La part des dépenses de santé sont-elles importantes au Malte ?

Here, the subject is "la part des dépenses de santé", so the verb must be written in the singular : "est-elle".