Editing French language (section)

=== Nouns ===
Every French [[noun]] is either masculine or feminine. Because French nouns are not inflected for gender, a noun's form cannot specify its gender. For nouns regarding the living, their [[grammatical genders]] often correspond to that which they refer to. For example, a male teacher is an ''enseignant'' while a female teacher is an ''enseignante''. However, plural nouns that refer to a group that includes both masculine and feminine entities are always masculine. So a group of two male teachers would be ''enseignants''. A group of two male teachers and two female teachers would still be ''enseignants''. However, a group of two female teachers would be ''enseignantes''. In many situations, including in the case of ''enseignant'', both the singular and plural form of a noun are pronounced identically. The article used for singular nouns is different from that used for plural nouns and the article provides a distinguishing factor between the two in speech. For example, the singular ''le professeur'' or ''la professeure'' (the male or female teacher, professor) can be distinguished from the plural ''les professeur(e)s'' because ''le'' /lə/, ''la'' /la/, and ''les'' /le(s)/ are all pronounced differently. With ''enseignant'', however, for both singular forms the ''le/la'' becomes ''l''', and so the only difference in pronunciation is that the ⟨t⟩ on the end of masculine form is silent, whereas it is pronounced in the feminine. If the word was to be followed by a word starting with a vowel, then liaison would cause the ⟨t⟩ to be pronounced in both forms, resulting in identical pronunciation. There are also some situations where both the feminine and masculine form of a noun are the same and the article provides the only difference. For example, ''le dentiste'' refers to a male dentist while ''la dentiste'' refers to a female dentist. Furthermore, a few nouns' meanings depend on their gender. For example, ''un livre'' (masculine) refers to a book, while ''une livre'' a (feminine) is a pound.