"Elle écrit un livre."

Translation: She is writing a book.

[nika.42]

sounded like "il ecrit..." to me :/

[Kuks5]

Lol, and I still mix french elle with spanish el :p

[BeckieJBrown]

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?

[Sitesurf]

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.

[Jeff283165]

Shouldnt take me more than 5 years to remember 1000s of nouns.

[NomadaJaime]

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.

[pye20]

Elle f ♀ • écrit:

un livre m ♂

une lettre f ♀

Verb: Livre • Livrer ( to deliver, hand over, betray )

Noun: Livre f ♀ ( Unit of weight, unit of currency, grade level ) • From Latin: Lībra f ♀ ( Unit of measure )

Noun: Livre m ♂ ( book ) • From Latin Adj: Lībera • Līber • Līberum f ♀ m ♂ n ⚲ ( Free, Unrestricted )

[miaou-meow]

( 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?

[Sitesurf]

These liaisons are optional anyway.

[mdavie17]

It's a little hard to remember the accents! Any advice?

[Sitesurf]

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!

[lunaluvgood]

the accent facing forward on the e makes it sound like ay

[Sitesurf]

For your information, it is called "acute accent" (é)
And on "è", it is a "grave accent" (pronounced like the "e" in "bet")

[pye20]

Think of and add the accented characters, with their phonic mapping as separate additional alphabet entries with unique names in the alphabet: basic, acute, grave, caret, circumflex, cédille, cedilla ...

If they are not uniquely named and exploited from your alphabet then when to use them will be clear as mud to you

[Susan913048]

How can you distinguish the pronunciation of elle ecrit from elles ecritent?

[Sitesurf]

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

[dgtrrz]

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?

[Mad.Medic]

Why isn't the "She write a book" correct? Just with the "is writing"?

[Sitesurf]

"She writes a book" is correct.

[antoneagui]

dosent every Word that ends in e has to be said as une

[Sitesurf]

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.

[Barty86620]

She writes a book!

[dfeinblum]

The audio on this question is messed up. There's no allision between ecrit and un.