How do I tell if a noun is masculine or feminine?

This is a common obstacle for students of French whose native language is English, which doesn't divide its nouns into genders. Unfortunately, there isn't a way of telling the gender of every word just by looking at it, but we can cover a lot of ground by looking at common patterns that we see in French words. For example, most nouns that have the ending '-tion', '-té' or '-ie' are feminine, whereas most nouns that have the ending '-age' or '-isme' are masculine in form. These patterns have exceptions (and I haven't mentioned all of them here!) but being aware of them can help get a grip on the mysterious concept of a gendered language.