Lady captain

[Jackie]

Is there a feminine form of the word "captain" in French?  The noun in French is masculine but ends in an "e":  "capitaine".  Can one say, "Ma Capitaine" when addressing a woman captain?

[pascal]

"ma capitaine" don't exist. There is no feminine form of the word "capitaine" in french, so you must say "mon capitaine" for a woman too.

[Neil Coffey]

I think capitaine fits into a category of words that isn't commonly feminised, but sometimes is by some speakers (perhaps as part of recent attempts to deliberately feminse certain traditionally masculine job titles in the name of political correctness).

[stu harris]

I can cite another one, which has its droll side. The mayor of a village or arrondissement was traditionally addressed as Monsieur Le Maire, "maire" being a masculine noun and the holders of that position always men until at least the '50s or '60s. So what to do when women started being elected maire? One village I know well wrestled with the grammatical problem posed by Madame Le Maire, and finally came up with the title Madame Monsieur Le Maire. Why they thought this was any less of a solecism is certainly beyond me!

[Neil Coffey]

lol Yes there are a few like this that essentially don't have any well-recognised feminine. Another interesting one is proviseur ("lycée principal"), because it's probably not so uncommon for a highschool headteacher to be a woman, but they would be adressed as Madame le proviseur.

[Jackie]

Thanks to all of you. It's interesting that even French speakers have the same problem. But if even cars and tables have genders assigned to them, I guess I shouldn't worry about peoples' titles.

[Judith Franck]

Interestingly enough, there seems to be no problem in referring to la capitaine of a sports team. The sporting world is less macho than I thought!