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Just wondering why the word 'application' or 'appli' seems to be feminine but from what I've noticed and French speakers have told me it is normally used as masculine in the sense "ton application" but feminine in cases like "une application".

Just wondering if this is correct and perhaps why this is.

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    mon/ton/son/ma/ta/sa/mes/tes/ses is "accorded" with the genre of the word. But because of sounds, we use mon/ton/son when the next word starts with a voyel or slient "h". See there: la-conjugaison.nouvelobs.com/regles/grammaire/… If you speak Spanish, the reason can be analogical to "el hambre" instead of "la hambre", but allow "la misma hambre" (but here it's due to the tonic accent)
    – Larme
    Dec 22, 2017 at 13:15
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    That is not a duplicate because its all in French.
    – Hasen
    Dec 22, 2017 at 14:19
  • The second Q&A (Why is “ton image” correct and not “ta image”?) is entirely in English... Thanks!
    – user3177
    Dec 22, 2017 at 18:16
  • @onvousaouï unfortunately that question is extremely specific just like mine. I doubt anybody would find that one over mine. Also the answers for that question are worse than the answer given here for my question. The question in French was a lot better but unfortunately only available in French.
    – Hasen
    Dec 23, 2017 at 18:16

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Because it sounds strange to put two vowels next to each other like 'ma application', so the masculine possessive is used instead, to create the liaison (letter 'n'), which makes the sentence flow easier when spoken. Remember this applies too if the second letter is a vowel and the first is 'h'.

Another example: 'mon identité'.

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  • Ok I see. So the masculine is used with all feminine words that begin with a vowel...when followed by ton/mon etc?
    – Hasen
    Dec 22, 2017 at 14:22
  • @Hasen Yep, thaat is correct :)
    – Cloud
    Dec 22, 2017 at 14:45

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