Most countries are feminine and some are masculine

[Crack1]

India is L'Inde.   [ Je vais en Inde.]

Sri Lanka is Le Sri Lanka.  [ Je vais au Sri Lanka.]

Pakistan is Le Pakistan.     [ Je vais au Pakistan.]

The US is a masculine plural country in French; it is les États-Unis.  [ Je vais aux États-Unis.]

Who decides gender of a country in French?

[George Hunt]

This has previously  been discussed  (about 3 years ago but I hope  it will still answer your question )

http://www.forum.french-linguistics.co.uk/forum/topics/how-do-we-ge...

[Crack1]

Thanks George for the reply.

[Crack1]

Let us look at India and Sri Lanka.

Both countries have 'a' at the end.  There should be a single gender for both countries.

It is not the case. Why is this?

India is feminine.                                   [  L'Inde ]

Sri Lanka is masucline.                       [   Le Sri Lanka ]

[George Hunt]

I am not quite sure what you mean .India and Sri Lanka do both end in "a"  but not in French.

I can't see what relevance their spelling in another language has to    what gender they have in the French language.                           

[Crack1]

Thanks George

Yes, both ends in 'a'.

Therefore both countries should belong to a one gender.

It is not the case here. India is feminine wheras Sri Lanka is masculine.

[George Hunt]

Well there are exceptions to every rule.

 

I still cannot see why you think "India" ends with an "a" in French. It is "l'Inde " and ends with an "e".

So it is normal to expect that it should be feminine since countries with names ending in "e" or "ie"  are normally feminine.

Le Sri Lanka  does not end in "e" or "ie" and so is less likely to be feminine and more likely to be masculine.

However I do not know the genders of all the different countries. and cannot say if an  county's name ending in "a" is always masculine.

[Charles D]

As to the United States:   'state' (l'etat) is masculine to begin with.  Les Etats-Unis is simply pluralizing the masculine.

[Vedas]

Hello,

Il n'existe pas de règle absolue qui détermine le genre des noms de pays et l'article qu'il faut employer devant ces noms. Il faut consulter les dictionnaires et les encyclopédies pour trouver ce genre de renseignement.

[alan gould]

I learned in my first year of French that there are only a few masculine countries.  They are Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Japan, Peru and Portugal.  I didn't learn Pakistan, but you're right about it.  I wouldn't know about the countries that emerged in the last 20 years.  But the total anyway is small, so it's easy to learn (and I just realized that all of N. America is masculine).     

[alan gould]

i just started thinking of countries that i think are masculine and a dictionary confirmed them: morocco, iraq, sudan, brazil.  i tried madagascar but it didn't give me a gender.  i guess french still goes by its old name of malagasy republic (Republique Malgache).  i didn't read the blurb on how the gender was determined, but i always thought almost all countries end in "e" which is soft and that "le mexique" is just an exception to that.