Faux Genders

Spanish and French, both being Romance languages, have a gender attribute to their nouns. Also, being related, many words have the same origin. These are called cognates. In French, cognates that don't have the same meaning as their source are called faux amis. Having studied French before Spanish, and not ever having been good at remembering what gender a given noun was in French, I found it convenient to rely on Spanish when I needed a noun's gender, since remembering a noun's gender in Spanish is as simple as learning only a few rules and a handful of exceptions. However, it turns out that not all French-Spanish cognates have the same gender, though probably well over 90% do. Here's a small compilation of exceptions I've been able to collect.

Faux Genders

English	French	Spanish	Portuguese	Latin
colour	la couleur	el color	a cor
end	la fin	el fin	o fim
inch	le pouce	la pulgada
ice	la glace	el hielo
minute	la minute	el minuto	o minuto
blood	le sang	la sangre	o sangue
sea	la mer	el mar	o mar
milk	le lait	la leche	o leite
flower	la fleur	la flor	a flor	flos (masc)
salt	le sel	la sal	o sal
pain	la douleur	el dolor	a dor

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