The French devote an average of two hours to physical activity each week. They love to walk. They also play sports and go to the gym. They like to exercise in various ways, but what expressions do the French use to convey the idea? How many ways are there to say “exercise” in French? Let’s find out in this lesson.

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One form of exercise is faire du sport (playing sports), and according to Patricia in her video on Antibes, there is no shortage of people qui font leur sport (doing their sporting activities) in Antibes:

Des gens qui font leur sport également... du jogging, du roller, du skateboard, des arts martiaux

Also people who are doing their sporting activities... jogging, rollerskating, skateboarding, martial arts

Caption 17, Mon Lieu Préféré Antibes

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In addition, note that when you hear the French talk about faire du sport, they don’t necessarily mean practicing a sport. In fact, faire du sport simply means "to exercise":

Y a pas d'âge pour faire du sport.

There's no age for exercising.

Caption 68, Le Jour où tout a basculé Des hôtes pas comme les autres - Part 3

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People like Amal and Caroline often talk about how they wished they’d exercise more:

Ah, il faudrait que je fasse du sport. -C'est vrai? T'es prête à faire du sport?

Ah, I should exercise. -Is that true? Are you ready to exercise?

Captions 102-103, Amal et Caroline La cigarette

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Faire du sport is synonymous with faire de l’exercice (to exercise), so Amal could have said this instead:

Ah, il faudrait que je fasse de l’exercice.

Ah, I should exercise.

Note that when talking about exercising the body, you use the expression faire de l’exercice, which always comes with the definite article l’ (the). Faire un exercice, with the indefinite article un (a), has a slightly different meaning. It just means “to do an exercise." This can be a physical activity:

On va faire un petit exercice.

We're going to do a little exercise.

Caption 72, Marie & Jeremy Candice et son coach

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Or it can be any type of exercise, such as a learning exercise:

L'élève qu'on voit ouvrir son manuel pour faire un exercice, peut-être voir une partie de cours

The student that you see opening his book to do an exercise, maybe to see a part of the lesson

Caption 14, Le Journal Manuels scolaires

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As you many have noticed, exercice as a noun is more or less a direct cognate of "exercise." Its verb form, exercer, mainly means "to exercise" in the sense of exercising or practicing a profession:

Le prévenu encourt une interdiction d'exercer.

The defendant risks being banned from exercising his profession.

Caption 42, Le Jour où tout a basculé À l'audience: Mon chirurgien était ivre - Part 1

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The reflexive form s’exercer takes on another meaning: “to train” or “to practice” any type of activity.

On peut s’exercer à chanter.

One can practice singing.

Finally, “to exert oneself” in English is not s’exercer in French but rather se dépenser, with the emphasis on expending some energy. In the example below, aller se dépenser involves a physical workout:

Et si vous alliez vous dépenser avec Maxime?

What if you went for a workout with Maxime?

Caption 60, Le Jour où tout a basculé Des hôtes pas comme les autres - Part 3

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The term “workout” doesn’t have a direct translation in French. There are only equivalents like l’exercice physique (physical exercise):

Après l'exercice physique...

After the workout...

Caption 27, Le Jour où tout a basculé Des hôtes pas comme les autres - Part 4

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Or you could say un entraînement for “workout”:

Des vidéos d'entraînement.

Workout videos.

Caption 30, Sports Shop D'un sport à l'autre

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There you have it. Exercez-vous tous les jours avec Yabla en faisant des exercices! (Practice every day with Yabla by doing exercises!)

In our previous lesson on nouns referring to humans, we learned that many nouns have dual genders that often end in -e in the feminine, which is especially useful for the feminization of job titles. In this lesson, we’ll focus on the many ways to feminize a job title and discuss what happens when there is no feminine equivalent. 

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Most profession names are masculine in French, regardless of whether they refer to men or women:

On a donc un kit de montage complet opérationnel à la portée d'un bon bricoleur ou d'un plombier

So we have a completely operational mounting kit within the capability of a good handyman or a plumber

Captions 30-31, Salon Eco Habitat: Primacalc, système anti-calcaire

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When no feminine title is available, we default to masculine. So, when referring to a woman pilot, for instance, we would simply say un pilote or une femme pilote (a woman pilot). (You may come across the feminine title une pilote, but it's relatively rare.)

Deux femmes pilotes parlent de leurs parcours : sexisme et regard des passagers.

Two female pilots talk about their journeys: sexism and passengers’ stares.

We also resort to the masculine when referring to a profession in general, as in les enseignants (teachers), or when we don’t know the gender of the person in question:

Parce que je dispose d'excellents liens avec les enseignants de mon master,

Because I have excellent connections with my master's degree instructors

Caption 66, QuestionEntretien: Pourquoi vous et pas un autre ? - Part 3

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For all that, many job titles do have a feminine equivalent, which often ends in -e, as in une députée (a female deputy):

Madame George Pau-Langevin, la députée de la quinzième circonscription

Ms. George Pau-Langevin, the deputy for the fifteenth constituency

Caption 92, Actu Vingtième: Le bleu dans les yeux, recyclerie de Belleville

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Note that you can only add an extra -e to an accented -é (-ée). Nouns that already end in -e (no accent) don’t change in the feminine form, as in un/une dentiste (a male/female dentist), the profession chosen by the girl’s schoolmate in the following video from Côte d'Ivoire:

Je veux être une dentiste.

I want to be a dentist.

Caption 96, Nader Fakhry: L'école pour tous

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(Bear in mind that usually, you would omit the article un/une when the job title comes directly after the verb être, but this may vary from one French-speaking country to another.)

In many cases, though, feminizing a job title is not as simple as adding an -e and requires making changes to the noun. 

Sometimes switching to feminine will cause a change in pronunciation for words ending with a consonant, as in un enseignant/une enseignante (teacher). The t in enseignante (female teacher) is sounded, but the t in enseignant (male teacher) is not:

Je suis enseignante de français langue étrangère, à l'Université Nancy Deux

I am an instructor of French as a foreign language at the University of Nancy Two

Caption 2, Yabla à Nancy: Université Nancy 2

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Other times, you will need to add a grave accent (è) and an extra -e to nouns ending in -er, as in infirmier/infirmière (male/female nurse). The suffix -er becomes -ère:

Je voulais être médecin. -C'est vrai? -Ouais, et je suis infirmière.

I wanted to be a doctor. -Is that true? -Yeah, and I am a nurse.

Caption 55, Micro-Trottoirs: Rêves d’enfants

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Nouns ending in -en often change to -enne in the feminine, as in chirurgien/chirurgienne (male/female surgeon). In the following example, we have the masculine version, un chirurgien, with a silent -n: 

Françoise Artigues accuse son chirurgien, le docteur Cujasse

Françoise Artigues is accusing her surgeon, Doctor Cujasse

Caption 1, Le Jour où tout a basculé -  À l'audience: Mon chirurgien était ivre - Part 1

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Nouns ending with the suffix -eur in the masculine form are a little bit more complicated, as they can take on different endings in the feminine. 

Un professeur (a male professor) simply becomes une professeur in the feminine or, less often, une professeure: 

Et j'ai pris sa suite avec la même professeur [or professeure] en fait.

And I followed in her footsteps with the same teacher, actually.

Caption 42, LCM Concert: La Folia à l'abbaye Saint-Victor

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Un auteur (a male author) can be feminized in two different ways. You can call a female author une auteure, a term borrowed from Canada, or you can say une autrice, the suffix -trice being more popular in France:

Enfin, en 2012, l’Académie française propose à son tour l’adoption du mot « auteure ». 

Finally in 2012, the Académie Française in turn proposes the adoption of the word “auteure” (female author).

Indeed, in Canada, they use the -eure suffix, as in traducteure (female translator), more frequently than in France, where they say traductrice instead:

Euh, ça m'a permis beaucoup de voyager et d'être parfois même la traducteure pour mon père ou ma mère

Uh, it's allowed me to travel a lot and to sometimes even be the translator for my dad or my mom

Captions 21-22, Annie Chartrand: Grandir bilingue

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The French usually prefer to use the suffix -trice, as in un acteur/une actrice. In the example below, Melissa Mars introduces herself as une actrice (an actress), among other things:

Bonjour! Je suis Melissa Mars. Je suis actrice, chanteuse, française ou martienne.

Hello! I am Melissa Mars. I'm an actress, singer, French or Martian.

Caption 1, Melissa Mars: Melissa et son premier album

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She also introduces herself as a singer, une chanteuse. Here we have yet another feminine form of -eur: -euse. So une chanteuse is un chanteur in the masculine, and une serveuse (a waitress) is un serveur (a waiter):

La serveuse t'aime bien Nico.

The waitress likes you, Nico.

Caption 16, Extr@ Ep. 6 - Le jour du loto - Part 5

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You might also see the suffix -esse, as in docteur/doctoresse (male/female doctor) and maître/maîtresse (school master/schoolmistress), but it's pretty dated.

The Académie Française, the French authority on language, has introduced many new feminine job titles, but it’s up to people to adopt them. Sometimes, women themselves don’t systematically adopt newly feminized titles. In the following video, the female judge introduces herself as le juge Beaulieu (Judge Beaulieu) even though she could have introduced herself as la juge:

Bonjour, je suis le juge Beaulieu.

Hello, I am Judge Beaulieu.

Caption 31, Le Jour où tout a basculé: À l'audience - Arnaque en couple ? - Part 1

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As you can see, the feminization of job titles is a work in progress, fraught with ambiguity and, sometimes, controversy. Just be sure to follow the correct grammatical rules applying to both masculine and feminine titles, as they are not negotiable in most cases.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for our next lesson on the gender of nouns referring to animals.

The conjunction or pops up in two of our new videos this week:

Or la gravité est présente partout.

But gravity is present everywhere.

Caption 79, Le Monde - L’astrologie fonctionne-t-elle ?

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Or, je n'étais pas de garde et surtout j'étais saoul.

But, I wasn't on call and above all I was drunk.

Captions 85-86, Le Jour où tout a basculé - À l'audience: Mon chirurgien était ivre

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Or is not a particularly common conjunction, but it's a good one to know nonetheless (just don't confuse it with the English "or," which is ou in French). It's a synonym of mais (but, yet) and related words like cependant, néanmoins, pourtant, toutefois (however, nevertheless):

Or, il y en a un quatrièmeque nous décrit ici en détail un grand voyageur qui se nomme Amerigo Vespucci.

However, there's a fourth one that a great explorer named Amerigo Vespucci describes to us here in detail.

Captions 34-35, Il était une fois - les Explorateurs 10. Amerigo Vespucci - Part 7

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You'll also see or used as a more general conjunction, equivalent to "now" or "well," often to introduce a new or oppositional fact:

Cette pièce a été remplacée ensuite par celle-ci

This coin was replaced later by this one

au début vingtième siècle.

in the early twentieth century.

Or c'est à peu près la même, mais modernisée pour l'époque.

Now, it's more or less the same, but modernized for the era.

Captions 16-18, Georges - Breizh Numismat

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Je croyais qu'il allait me demander en mariage ce soir-là. Or, il ne l'a pas fait.
I thought he was going to ask me to marry him that night. Well, he didn't do it.

As you can see here, or always comes at the beginning of a sentence or clause when used as a conjunction. You could even call it a "transition word." But or isn't only a conjunction! It also happens to be the word for "gold":

Il doit y avoir une mine d'or.

There must be a gold mine here.

Caption 39, Il était une fois - les Explorateurs 10. Amerigo Vespucci - Part 3

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L'or is both the color gold and the element. Its adjective form is doré(e):

Il m'a donné une bague de fiançailles dorée.
He gave me a gold engagement ring.

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Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for our next lesson and tweet us @yabla or send your topic suggestions to newsletter@yabla.com.