How annoying is it when non native speakers get m/f nouns mixed up?

[flitwit99]

I know there's a language board somewhere but I can't for the life of me find it.
Now I am getting old I can't remember things like I used to. I can never remember the gender of nouns. How annoying is it when people say le instead of la in French for example? I've become really self conscious about it and it's putting me off speaking which is ridiculous. Because English doesn't have gender nouns I have no idea what it sounds like to get it wrong. Is it really bad?

My French teacher taught me that le and la were dependant on whether you were talking in past or present tense

However... It's important to find a balance. You need to find your feet and confidence to speak, but if you don't also learn what is masculine and feminine too you can get whole phrases wrong, as everything has to agree.. I'm fairly fluent, but really wish that I had paid more attention to early grammar when I started out!

but if you don't also learn what is masculine and feminine too you can get whole phrases wrong, as everything has to agree.

I don't think it matters so much in speech. My kids tell me that in French there is a big difference between written and casual spoken - a much bigger difference than in English (of course this may be because they speak very "standard English" due to limited mixing with English-speaking teens).

I don't know whether this is also true in German.

In writing as long as you know your grammatical rules, it's easy enough to check the gender of a noun. My written French is native standard but I still have to google a noun gender from time to time.

In German about half the nouns have an ending or rule that make it obvious what gender they are, so that would jar if you got it wrong, but for the rest, you can usually guess feminine, but I've seen native speakers argue over der vs das - but then both those are treated the same in sentences most of the time.

When I was doing German exchanges I figured almost all adjective endings were -e or -en and could be mumbled - now I usually get it right when it's -es or -er instead but still get -e and -en mixed up!

Difficulty is more likely over mispronouncing U with or without umlaut, so accidentally telling someone you're gay instead of dizzy or vice versa.

I've always found people to be quite happy your trying to speak their language rather than just assuming they will know English? It is just like for me personally I work with a lady who is just learning English im always happy to help her if she wants my help in putting what she wants to say together.

I am the most rubbish French speaker, but I always try to give it a go. It's not only my M/F mixups but my appalling accent to boot. I channel what my GCSE teacher said, "you need to be understood by a sympathetic listener". I really latch on to the sympathetic bit On the whole everyone is really helpful and kind though.