In languages with grammatical gender, like French, you can often get away with getting the genders wrong, although it’s best to try to learn them when you learn nouns. However there are some words that have different meanings in different genders.

An example in French is loup(e): le loup [lu:] (masculine) is a wolf, and la loupe [lu:p] (feminine) is a magnifying glass – the context will clarify what you mean if you get the genders mixed up, and the pronunciation helps as well.

The following French words have the same pronunciation but different meanings in different genders:

– le boum = bang, explosion / la boum = party
– le bout = tip, end / la boue = mud
– le cave = idiot, sucker / la cave = basement, cellar
– le chêne = oak tree/wood / la chaîne = chain, channel
– le col = collar, neck / la colle = glue
– le livre = book / la livre = pound (curreny/weight)
– le manche = handle / la manche = sleeve / la Manche = English Channel
– le mur = wall / la mûre = blackberry
– le rose = pink (colour) / la rose = rose (flower)
– le vase = vase / la vase = silt, mud

More words like this: http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/dualgender_2.htm

One way to avoid getting your genders in a muddle is to talk about everything in the plural.

Yesterday I discovered an interesting French word: paner, which means to coat with breadcrumbs or to bread.

So a Scotch Egg, which is a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, breaded and deep fried, can be described as a œuf dur enrobé de chair à saucisse et pané in French – it sounds better in French, although it’s not something you’d find in France or other French-speaking regions, as far as I know.

Restaurants in the UK often use French names and descriptions for dishes as they sound better and more sophisticated than their English equivalents. Do restaurants in other countries do this?

Would you rather have toad-in-the-hole or saucisses cuites au four dans de la pâte à crêpes?

Or how about pudding aux raisins instead of spotted dick?