Learn French: Le garçon est ici.

Le garçon est ici.

The boy is here.

Breakdown of Le garçon est ici.

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Questions & Answers about Le garçon est ici.

Why do we use le instead of la before garçon?

In French, every noun has a gender, meaning it is considered either masculine or feminine. Garçon (boy) is masculine, so we use the masculine word for 'the', which is le. If the word were feminine, we would use la.

The lesson is about pronouns like il (he) and elle (she). Why does this sentence use est when there's no pronoun?

Est is the form of the verb être (to be) that goes with a single third-party subject like 'he', 'she', or 'it'. Here, le garçon (the boy) is the subject and acts as the 'he' of the sentence. If you replaced 'the boy' with a pronoun, you would say il est (he is).

What is the little mark under the 'c' in garçon?

That mark is called a cedilla (cédille). In French, the letter 'c' before an 'o', 'a', or 'u' usually makes a hard 'k' sound. Adding the cedilla (ç) forces it to make a soft 's' sound instead. Without it, garçon would sound like 'garkon'!

Since ici starts with a vowel, do I pronounce the 't' at the end of est?

Normally, the 't' at the end of est is completely silent. However, because the next word (ici) starts with a vowel, you will often hear French speakers glide the 't' sound smoothly into the next word. This is called a liaison, making the two words sound a bit like 'est-tici'.