Because garçon (boy) is a masculinenoun. We use un for "a" or "an" when the noun is masculine, and une when it is feminine.
Why is it L'enfant instead of Le enfant?
In French, when short words like le or la (meaning "the") come right before a word starting with a vowel, they drop their own vowel and attach to the next word with an apostrophe. This makes L'enfantmuch smoother to say out loud.
Is enfant a masculine or a feminine noun?
It can be both! You can say un enfant for a male child and une enfant for a female child. Because the word for "the" becomes l'before a vowel either way, we only know this specific child is masculine because the rest of the sentence tells us he isun garçon.
What is the little hook under the c in garçon?
That mark is called a cedilla. In French, the letter c usually makes a hard "k" sound when it comes before an a, o, or u. Adding the cedilla changes it to a soft "s" sound. Without it, the word would be pronounced "gar-kon".
Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching French grammar and vocabulary.