Un Ministral, Des Ministraux

For anybody wondering about the title, that's a sort-of pun in French about how words get pluralized following French rules.

The quintessential example is "cheval" (horse) which becomes "chevaux" (horses), which is the rule they're following (or being cute about). Un mistral, des mistraux. Un ministral, des ministraux.

(Ironically the plural of the Mistral wind in the Larousse dictionnary would technically be Mistrals[1][2], however weird that sounds to my french ears and to the people who wrote that article perhaps!)

[1] https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/mistral_mistr... [2] https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/mistral

It's complex because french is full of exceptions

the classical way to pluralize "–al" words:

  un animal → des animaux [en: animal(s)]
  un journal → des journaux [en: journal(s)]

with some exceptions:

  un carnaval → des carnavals [en: carnival(s)]
  un festival → des festivals [en: festival(s)]
  un idéal → des idéals (OR des idéaux) [en: ideal(s)]
  un val → des vals (OR des vaux) [en: valley(s)]

There is no logic there (as many things in french), it's up to Mistral to choose how the plural can be

EDIT: Format + better examples

That's news to me that French for "valley" is masculine and "val" - isn't it feminine "vallée"? Like, say "Vallée Blanche" near Chamonix? And I suppose the English ripoff, "valley" sounds more like "vallée" than "val" (backwards argument, I know).

Yes, la vallée (feminine) and le val (masculine). Valley is usually la vallée. Val is mostly only used in the names of places.

Apparently val gave vale in English.