Breakdown of L'orange est un fruit.
Questions & Answers about L'orange est un fruit.
Since this lesson is about plurals, how would we change this to "Oranges are fruits"?
You would change all three parts of the sentence! L'orange becomes les oranges (regular plural with an s). The verb est (is) becomes sont (are). Finally, un fruit becomes des fruits, using the plural indefinite article des. Why is it l'orange instead of la orange?
Orange is a feminine word, so its normal word for "the" is la. But because orange starts with a vowel, the a in la is dropped and replaced with an apostrophe. This is called elision, and it prevents two vowel sounds from clashing. Is fruit a masculine or feminine word?
It is masculine. That's why we use the masculine word for "a", which is un, rather than the feminine une. Even though it's spelled exactly like the English word, you still have to memorize its French gender! Does the plural word fruits sound different from the singular fruit?
No, they sound exactly the same! In French, the final t in fruit is silent. When you add an s to make the plural fruits, that s is also silent. You will only hear that it's plural because of the article before it, like des fruits. Learn L'orange est un fruit and more in French
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