One of the most common topics of conversation is what people do for a living, so being familiar with different professions in French will surely come in handy in many of your first interactions in the language.

So whether you’ll need this French occupation vocabulary for small talk or for official forms, today we bring you a comprehensive list of professions in French, broken down by discipline.

Talking about occupations in French

Before we dive into our vocab lists of French professions, let’s just cover a few basic expressions for talking about work in French.

• C’est quoi ton métier ? – C’est quoi votre métier ? – What’s your occupation?

• C’est quoi ton travail ? – C’est quoi votre travail ? – What’s your job?

• Où travailles-tu ? – Où travaillez-vous ? – Where do you work?

• Tu étudies pour devenir quoi ? – You’re studying to become what?

• Je suis [métier]. – I’m a [profession].

Note that whereas in English you use an article to introduce your profession (“I’m an architect”), in French the article is omitted (“Je suis architecte”). Articles are instead necessary when referring to someone in a given profession without specifying the individual (“l’architecte du bâtiment” – “the architect of the building”; “il nous faut un architecte” – “we need an architect”).

Grammar considerations

Since all nouns have a gender in French, and people and professions are nouns, all French professions have a gender. Some professions have a single word that refers to both men and women who practice that occupation, while some have different masculine and feminine forms (like waiter and waitress in English).

For most professions in French where the word changes between genders, the feminine form takes a different ending. This spelling change also indicates a pronunciation change, usually in the final consonant sound. Generally speaking, the final consonant is fairly silent in the masculine form but clearly pronounced in the feminine. For example, a male nurse (infirmier) is pronounced “en-fare-me-ay” (with the final r essentially silent) but a female nurse (infirmière) is pronounced “en-fare-me-air” (with the final r pronounced explicitly).

In the cases where the form of the profession’s word does not change for the two genders, only the article (le or la) will change. There is no pronunciation difference between these words. Nonetheless, any other words in the sentence such as adjectives or pronouns still need to respect the rules of gender agreement to reflect whether the person in the occupation is a man or a woman.

List of professions in French

Now we’re ready to learn the vocab for different occupations in French! We’ve organized them into broad groups to keep our lists manageable, and listed each profession alphabetically by their English names. The next two columns show the masculine and feminine terms for each profession in French.

Business professions in French

Creative professions in French

Educational professions in French

Medical professions in French

Public service professions in French

Service industry professions in French

Building trades in French

Technological professions in French

Transportation professions in French

Conclusion

Now that you’ve expanded your vocabulary with various occupations in French, you’ll be able to confidently talk about your own occupation and the occupations of others in a variety of situations.

Keep in mind that while some professions remain the same for both the masculine and feminine forms, others have separate forms for each gender. There may also be pronunciation changes, depending on their spelling changes.

As the saying goes, practice makes progress, so go forth and use your new vocabulary about all these jobs in French!