[rich_sasha]

That's news to me that French for "valley" is masculine and "val" - isn't it feminine "vallée"? Like, say "Vallée Blanche" near Chamonix? And I suppose the English ripoff, "valley" sounds more like "vallée" than "val" (backwards argument, I know).

[idoubtit]

The "Vallée blanche" you mentioned is not very far from "Val d'Arly" or "Val Thorens" in the Alps. Both words "val" and "vallée", and also "vallon", come from the Latin "vallis". See the Littré dictionary https://www.littre.org/definition/val for examples over the last millennium.

By the way "Le dormeur du val" (The sleeper of the small valley) is one of Rimbaud's most famous poems, often learned at school.

[bambax]

Un val is a small vallée. Une vallée is typically several kilometers wide; un val is a couple of hundred meters wide, tops.

The "Trésor de la langue française informatisé" (which hasn't been updated since 1994) says val is deprecated, but it's common in classic literary novels, together with un vallon, a near synonym.

[dustypotato]

Le terme vallée, utilisé comme toponyme, doit être distingué du terme val qui est souvent employé pour désigner et nommer une région limitée dans divers pays d'Europe et dans leurs langues.

-- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vall%C3%A9e I agree. it's weird. I'm sure there are other similar examples

[mytailorisrich]

Yes, la vallée (feminine) and le val (masculine). Valley is usually la vallée. Val is mostly only used in the names of places.

Apparently val gave vale in English.

[makapuf]

Genders in French words is a fine example of a cryptography-grade random generator.

[GuB-42]

It can funny sometimes. A breast (un sein) and a vagina (un vagin) are both masculine, while a beard (une barbe) is feminine. For the slang terms, a ball (une couille) and a dick (une bite) are also feminine.

Of course, it is not always the opposite, otherwise it wouldn't be random. A penis (un penis) is masculine for instance.

[Muromec]

It's a keyed generator, they just lost that small bag that seeded it