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- "The cat is black."
"The cat is black."
Translation:Le chat est noir.
43 Comments
The articles "la" and "le" don't depend on the objdect's gender, but on the word itself. In French all words are either masculine or feminine - having nothing to do with the gender, thats just the way the language is. If you are referring to a female cat, then you would say "Le chat est fille" (or something along those lines), not completely changing the word and its article.
108
Noir describes a masculine noun; noire describes a feminine noun. Determining whether a noun is masculine or feminine is largely a matter of memorization.
In this sentence I noticed that the definite article "le" is used but we hear the 't' at the end of the French cat, even the male, because of liason with the verb "est" which of course starts with a vowel. In other words, "chat" is pronounced "sha " except when there is a liason to a following word that starts with a vowel, then its 't' is heard starting the next word. This may be confusing to some people, so I am providing a site that explains liason: http://french.about.com/library/pronunciation/bl-liaisons.htm http://french.about.com/library/pronunciation/bl-liaisons-r.htm
l' is used instead of le or la in front of a noun that starts with a vowel. "l'eau" which means water is a good example.
That isn't to say that some French people speak so quickly that you might think that is what they said. Of course, chat starts with a consonant and is masculine so it is "le chat" and the feminine would be "la chatte". The plural article "les" is never contracted, instead the final letter ( 's' in this case) which is normally silent is loaned to start a following word that begins with a vowel. The 's' sound changes to 'z' sound in this liason. "les amis" would be a good example of this. (Please scroll up to my other response to someone else for more on liason.) http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/articles_2.htm