Every week, French learners flock to our blog to learn interesting details about a word of our choice. For this edition, we’ve chosen the word genre.
To start things off, listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
You might have noted that it doesn’t sound far off the same word we have in English, ‘genre’. We might use this word to ask about or describe a type of music, film or literature. While you can use genre in French for the same meaning, it’s interesting because it has several other translations and usages.
Genre translates as ‘kind’ or ‘type’, ‘manner’ and also ‘gender’. As well as this, it appears in conversational French as a filler word – it’s used in the same way we use ‘like’ in English when we’re pausing for thought, or telling a story.
As a masculine noun, you might see articles such as un or le before it. And if you want to make this noun plural, it becomes genres. For more information, you can visit our Easy Learning French Grammar page about turning a singular noun into a plural.
With so many translations available, the best way to see how this word works is to check out some examples:
du même genre the same type (of thing)
Quel genre de musique aimes-tu ? What genre of music do you like?
On préfère ce genre de chaussures. We prefer this type of shoe.
Notre professeur d’histoire avait un genre très bizarre.
Our history teacher used to have a very strange manner about him / strange air about him.
avoir bon / mauvais genre to appear to be respectable / not respectable; disreputable
le genre humain the human race; humankind
En français, il existe deux genres grammaticaux – le masculin et le féminin.
In French there are two grammatical genders – masculine and feminine.
genre de nom noun gender
identité (f) de genre gender identity
Finally, we can look at some phrases illustrating how genre might be used as filler in spoken French. Let’s compare how this might come up in phrases in French and English, as it’s something you might hear in conversation. Remember that it has nothing to do with the verb ‘to like’ which is aimer:
« C’était, genre, grand et moche… Genre médiéval mais ce n’était pas très vieux. »
“It was, like, big and ugly… Like, medieval but it wasn’t very old.”
« On a aimé tous les animaux, genre, les animaux mignons surtout. Bon, on a vu genre dix lapins et quelques chatons. »
“We liked all the animals, like especially all the cute animals. Well, we saw like ten rabbits and some kittens.”
We hope that you now feel more comfortable using genre in French. The beauty of this sort of blog is that you can keep coming back for a new word every week! See you here next time.
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
