In linguistics, a feature of a word or phrase is said to be covert if there is no surface evidence of its existence within that word or phrase. For example, many languages have covert grammatical gender in nouns, in that there is no way to tell from the form of a noun which gender it is; gender only becomes apparent in, for example, articles and adjectival agreement, which depend on gender. In German instruction, the article (der, die, das) is generally taught along with a noun, so that the student may remember which gender the noun is. In spoken French, grammatical number is largely covert: the singular and plural forms of most nouns are identical in pronunciation. However, number is still relevant, as it affects articles and verbal agreement, so it is still logical to say that one instan