Mon cousin est européen.

Questions & Answers about Mon cousin est européen.

What would this sentence look like if I were talking about a female cousin?
It would be Ma cousine est européenne. Because the noun is feminine, the adjective européen changes to its feminine form. Adjectives ending in -en double the final consonant and add an -e to become -enne.
Does the pronunciation change between européen and européenne?
Yes, noticeably! The masculine européen ends with a nasal vowel sound, meaning you don't actually pronounce the "n". But in the feminine européenne, the double "n" followed by a silent "e" means you lose the nasal sound and pronounce a clear, hard "n" at the end.
Why isn't européen capitalized, since "European" is capitalized in English?
In French, you don't capitalize adjectives of nationality or regional origin. You only capitalize them when they are used as nouns to describe a person (for example, C'est un Européen, meaning "He is a European").
How do we know the cousin in this sentence is male?
Two clues: the noun itself is spelled cousin (the female version is cousine), and it uses the masculine possessive adjective mon instead of the feminine ma.

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