Note B — GRAMMATICAL REFERENCES

Footnote B: (return) Some grammarians believe they have found a key by which this sexual chaos can be solved. They have ingeniously discovered in the language some sixty reliable rules, enabling the confiding student to tell which of the fifty thousand nouns take either the article le or the article la. As, however, the exceptions balance the normals, and as the student will have trouble enough without them, they have been excluded here, out of sympathy for him. By close attention, and frequent use of nouns with their proper articles, the student will easily overcome the gender difficulty, and acquire in time an unconscious knowledge of it. In using the correct article he need have no better reason than a French boy has, who will say le couteau because le fits the word and la couteau would sound funny.