De top 10 beginners fouten

Top 10 Beginning French Mistakes

http://french.about.com/cs/beginning1/a/mistakes.htm
French Nouns - Les Noms
A noun is a word that represents a thing, whether that thing is concrete (e.g., a chair, a dog) or abstract (an idea, happiness).
In French, all nouns have a gender - they are either masculine or feminine. It is very important to learn a noun's gender along with the noun itself because articles, adjectives, and some verbs have to agree with nouns; that is, they change depending on the gender of the noun they precede or follow. The gender of some nouns makes sense (homme [man] is masculine, femme [woman] is feminine) but others don't (personne [person] is always feminine, even if the person is a man!) The best way to learn the gender of nouns is to make your vocabulary lists with the definite or indefinite article. That is,
Rather than a list like this...
make lists like this...
livre = book chaise = chair
BAD LIST :-(
un livre = book une chaise = chair
GOOD LIST :-)
so that you learn the gender with the noun. The gender is part of the noun and you will be much better off learning it now, as a beginner, than trying to go back after years of study and memorizing the genders of all the words you've already learned (I speak from experience). Also, some nouns have different meanings depending on whether they are masculine or feminine - learn more.
There are some tendencies in the gender of nouns, but there are always exceptions. Countries and names that end in e are usually (but not always) feminine. There are a few common patterns, but please don't use these as a way to avoid learning the genders of nouns - just learn each word as gender + noun and then you'll know them forever.
Ending
is usually

-age
masculine
Exceptions:
une pageune nageune cage
une plageune rageune image
-eau
masculine
Exceptions:
l'eau
une peau
-ée
feminine
Exceptions:
un lycée
un musée
-ion
feminine
Exceptions:
un lionun scionun avion
un millionun billionun bastion
-té
feminine
Exceptions:
un comité
un invité
More gender patterns

Page 2: Gender and number of French nouns
French Parts of Speech