your daily dose of david sedaris.

Of all the stumbling blocks inherent in learning [French], the greatest for me is the principle that each noun has a corresponding sex that affects both its articles and its adjectives. Because it is female and lays eggs, a chicken is masculine. Vagina is masculine as well, while the word masculinity is feminine. Forced by grammar to take a stand one way or the other, hermaphrodite is male and indecisiveness female.