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How can you distinguish the pronunciation of elle ecrit from elles ecritent?
The singular "écrit" ends in the sound -ee: EL EKREE
The plural is "écrivent" and the ending sound is -eeV. In addition, there is a Z liaison between "elles" and "écrivent": EL ZEKREEV
Please let me quote what Laura says in about.com (this page: http://french.about.com/od/mistakes/a/beginning.htm)
"French accents indicate the correct pronunciation of a word, and are required, not optional. Therefore, you need to make an effort to learn what they mean, which words they are found in, and how to type them. "
Bon courage!
For your information, it is called "acute accent" (é) And on "è", it is a "grave accent" (pronounced like the "e" in "bet")
Oh this is contusing. The elle is feminine, yes? Yet we still refer to the book as un? I wrote une? I do not understand why we have to adjust the un?
All nouns in French have a gender: masculine or feminine.
Elle is a personal pronoun, obviously reserved for women but also as a substitute to feminine nouns.
"Livre" is masculine, always.
Therefore, there is no tip: you have to learn every noun with its gender.
Because "un" refers to the book, and "elle" refers to the reader. Different nouns, different genders, and articles and adjectives match the gender and number of the noun they go together with.
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( ಥ~ಥ) woe.. woe!.. tu écriS un livre has no liaison, but elle écriT un livre does? will it be, at least, explained later or never?
No, there are also plenty of masculine nouns ending with an -e. Genders are not ruled by one unique logic, you have to learn them with each noun.
I am confused on the tense. It says "Elle ecrit un livre" translates to "She is writing a book", but wouldn't it be "She writes a book"? Is this generally understood to mean "She is writing a book" in conversation, or is it changing the tense in translation?
