The sneaky exceptions

A few famous words wear the wrong name tag

Some words break the ending rule on purpose, and they are the ones that catch everybody. The -age family is masculine, but la page, la plage, la cage and l'image are feminine. The -ée family is feminine, but le musée and le lycée are masculine.

You do not need to learn hundreds of these. About twenty troublemakers cause most of the mistakes. Meet them once, laugh at them, and they stop being scary.

Examples

Practice (sample)

Le or la?

1. ______ page
   le / la
   Answer

   la. la page is one of the four famous feminine -age words (page, plage, cage, image).
2. ______ lycée
   le / la
   Answer

   le. le lycée and le musée are masculine even though they end in -ée.
3. ______ peau
   le / la
   Answer

   la. la peau (skin) and l'eau are feminine, the only common -eau words that are.
4. ______ silence
   le / la
   Answer

   le. most -ence words are feminine, but le silence is masculine.
5. ______ image
   le / la
   Answer

   la. une image, like une page and une plage.
6. ______ squelette
   le / la
   Answer

   le. le squelette is the classic -ette exception.

The online game draws fresh questions from a bank of 18, in two levels.