In the Bud Lite commercial where the man and the woman are stuck on a desert island, the woman spots a plane. She screams, "Une avion, une avion!" Subtitles at the bottom of the screen translate the French. One problem: "avion" is a masculine noun in French, so she should've screamed, "Un avion, un avion!"
Well, I guess the woman was quite nervous since so was on a deserted island with a total geek. She must have been so excited to see the "un avion" or "une avion" that she just blabbed out whatever. Just a thought.
Re: The comment about the lady making a mistake because she was nervous: Anyone who speaks French knows that avion is masculine, it goes without saying. Saying une avion, to a French-speaking person's ear is almost like hearing fingernails on a chalk board... You just don't say une avion... Congrats to the person who found the mistake!
It's been six years since I studied French in high school, but I think the commercial is correct. The way I remember it is that if the noun is masculine but begins with a vowel sound, you use the feminine "une." In French, you don't pronounce the n in "un" like we do in English, so you need the consonant sound of "une." Because of the nasal sound, "un" is pronounced more like "uh" the "un." If I'm remembering French grammar rules correctly, this is not a slip-up.
This comment is for rgp. Un, and une have totally different sounds. Un is pronounced with very little emphasis on the letter n, while une is pronounced oon with a heavy emphasis on the letter n. Take it from me, I studied in Quebec.
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