...... quite a few of them were my very own inventions.....
......and here's another one .....
............ mind you ...........
...maybe it's not a problem for many of you .... but at the very least, it must be a big problem for your brain storing all that stuff in there, taking up valuable space remembering that a sticking-plaster ( sparadrap) is masculine ( le sparadrap) and thousands of other mostly random gender facts , space which could otherwise be used to keep track of where the cat is and where you've left the electric drill.
Let's suppose you're an extreme case ... the only thing you really really know the gender of is .... a dog ..... un chien.
So... what you do is , you cluster around the word "dog" lots of masculine things that go with a dog ..... here's some obvious ones ....
le nez
l'os
le biscuit
le chenil
l'aboiement
le veston
un grondement
le collier
... but .. often you remember things better if they're silly, rude, peculiar or very rude.
... so why not make little pictures in your mind linking masculine rude/peculiar/funny stuff to a dog ... like this ...
a dog wearing a hat ( le chapeau)
a dog in a boat ( le bateau)
a dog wearing pyjamas ( les pyjamas)
a dog on a trampolin ( le tremplin)
a dog on the roof ( le toit)
a dog in a handbag ( le sac à main)
a dog in a rucksack ( le sac à dos)
a dog playing the violin ( le violon)
or a piano ( le piano)
or the trombone ( le trombon)
or using a paper-clip ( le trombon) ( yes it is)(think about it)
a dog being sick ( le vomi)
a dog peeing ( le pipi)
a dog, er, doing the solid stuff ( l'excrement) ( but not la merde of course)
But of course, you should make up your own daft/gormless/rude/clever pictures.
You can do it with other things besides dogs.... whatever you want really.
But ...
Make them truly memorable
As you might have realised, I've been away for a week or so, in N. Ireland. In the big museum in Belfast, they had guides and plans in English, German, Spanish ... but no French. They had run out ... they offered to print one out for me, but they couldn't say when ! The thing is though, the maps were rubbish ... the museum was full of lost people ... totally lost.
On the way out I suggested to the people at the "help desk" that they should re-brand the museum as a Labyrinth instead. Nice cafe though, and a genuine Egyptian Mummy, but I realised that it was more likely to be someone who got so lost tha they eventually died in there after creeping into an empty glass case, having given up all hope of ever getting out.
It fits the facts.
Hey ... they didn't have a museum guide in Welsh either.
Yn synnu !
Music !! Saez ... the terrific "Jeunesse lève-toi ".... what a powerful song...