French speakers: is "anniversaire" masculin ou feminin?

Masculin, un anniversaire.

For have a good year, what you said translates to “are you having a good year?” What we say here can be kept simple; bonne année. Basically, good year, that’s what we say on New Year’s usually. For other purposes, you can say “je te souhaite une bonne année, or je vous souhaite une bonne année, this translates to I wish you a good year.

Agreed, on all counts. :)

I sometimes wonder whether anniversaire is masculine solely because it’s too awkward to use a feminine pronoun before it. It otherwise feels like a word that should be feminine.

What I always wondered is who the hell decided what should be feminine or masculine, and why.

@Symbeline and when did they decide it?

Thanks – that makes sense; I knew there was something wrong with the tense or something. But if I wanted to wish someone “bon anniversaire” and then say “have a good year” should I say “Je te souhaite une bonne annee”? Or I could say “Je te souhaite un bon anniversaire et une bonne annee”, I guess.

And would that be true of dinosaur French as well?

Yeah you can say that. Or, instead of bon anniversaire, dinosaur French would be, rather, “joyeux” anniversaire. Joyous or happy, this is basically happy birthday. Less redundant too, since you don’t have the word bon twice. Je te souhaite un joyeux anniversaire et une bonne année.

Feminine of joyeux, just for the hell of it; joyeuse. This is how we can tell anniversaire is masculine, since une joyeuse anniversaire sounds totally wrong. XD

We learned to say “Bonne Anniversaire” which would indicate feminine, but there are odd and silly exceptions in Grench as in most languages.

So I guess I don’t really know. Sorry.

@canidmajor It sounds like “Bonne anniversaire”, because of the liaison between the consonant of the first word and the vowel of the second word. But it’s properly written “Bon anniversaire”, because anniversaire is masculine.

@Symbeline “What I always wondered is who the hell decided what should be feminine or masculine, and why.”

I know, right? Sometimes, there is a weird (i.e., sexist) logic to it – other times, there seems to be none at all. I suppose the original decisions would have been made in Latin or a precursor to Latin, then carried down.

Maybe the french dinosaurs determined gender?

@janbb Relevant.

@dappled_leaves The computer gods didn’t like that link. Can you try a repost?

@janbb Hmm! Works for me, but here’s the whole URL:

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-1926.png

Second link does the trick, one hopes.

You’re probably right, @dappled_leaves, but I was talking about how it was printed on the birthday cards that our French teachers would give us on our birthdays. Maybe the cards were geared to the sex of the receiver.

Oh @dappled_leaves That is perfect! Did you just go out and draw that! (Must send it to Gail.)

@janbb Nope, just got lucky :) although there is probably a Dinosaur Cartoons cartoon for every occasion. The schtick is that the panels are always exactly the same, but the text changes. They’re often quite brilliant.

Lol, gay French moon. Are there any more of these comics?

Loads and loads. Enjoy!

Nice, thanks. :) These are pretty good lol.