--- title: Pets and animals — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Pets and animals», a lesson of the french course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Every animal word has a gender that belongs to the word, not to the animal: une tortue is always une, even if your tortoise is a boy. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/) / Pets and animals # Pets and animals Lesson 15 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 13 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/french/15-pets-and-animals/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/1/) — Every animal word has a gender that belongs to the word, not to the animal: une tortue is always une, even if your tortoise is a boy. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/2/) — Animal names can be funny pictures: a goldfish is un poisson rouge, "a red fish", and a guinea pig is un cochon d'Inde, "a pig from India". - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/3/) — Picture a gate in Provence with the sign Attention au chien !: attention here means watch out, not pay attention, so you stay outside. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/4/) — Animals sound the same everywhere, but each language writes the noises differently: a French dog says ouaf ouaf and a French rooster says cocorico. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/5/) — un chien ("uhn SHYAN") is a dog and un chat ("uhn SHA") is a cat; a female dog is une chienne. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/6/) — You write le hamster, not l'hamster, because some words starting with h act as if they began with a consonant; others, like l'hôtel and l'homme, don't. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/7/) — un poisson rouge means a goldfish, word for word "a red fish". - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/9/) — French animal noises: ouaf ouaf (woof woof), miaou (miaow), cocorico (cock-a-doodle-doo), meuh (moo), coin-coin (quack quack). - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/10/) — Most words ending in -al change to -aux in the plural: un cheval, des chevaux (horses); un animal, des animaux. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/12/) — une tortue is a tortoise or turtle and is always feminine, whether the animal is a boy or a girl. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/13/) — une souris ("un soo-REE") is a mouse; the s is silent; words ending in s, x or z don't change in the plural: des souris; souris is also a computer mouse. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/15/) — un cochon d'Inde is a guinea pig, word for word "a pig from India"; funnily, guinea pigs are not pigs at all, and they come from South America, not from India or from Guinea. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/15-pets-and-animals/16/) — Forest animals: le loup ("LOO") is the wolf, le renard ("ruh-NAR") the fox and l'ours ("LOORSS") the bear, where the s is said. - ← previous: [My family](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/14-my-family/) - next →: [The body](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/16-the-body/) - ↑ back to [French](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/)