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L'homme et la femme sont occupés.

L'homme et la femme sont occupés.
The man and the woman are busy.
From Lesson 9:Plural adjective agreement (+s)·French

Breakdown of L'homme et la femme sont occupés.

être
to be
l'homme
the man (m)
la femme
the woman
et
and
occupé
busy

Questions & Answers about L'homme et la femme sont occupés.

Why is occupés masculine plural when there is a woman in the sentence?
In French, when an adjective describes a mixed group of masculine (l'homme) and feminine (la femme) nouns, the masculine form always wins. You just add an s to the masculine singular form (occupé) to make the plural occupés. Even if there were fifty women and only one man, you would still use the masculine plural!
Do I pronounce the s at the end of occupés?
No, the s added to make an adjective plural is almost always silent. It is only there in writing to agree with the plural subject. When speaking, the singular occupé and the plural occupés sound exactly the same.
Why do we use sont here?
sont is the plural "they" form of the verb être (to be). Because the subject has two people (l'homme et la femme), they count together as a plural "they" (ils). If it was just one person, you would use est, like in l'homme est occupé.
Why does homme use l' but femme uses la?
The word homme starts with a silent h, which French treats like a vowel. When a noun starts with a vowel sound, the words le or la drop their vowel and combine into l' to make the pronunciation smoother. Because femme starts with a consonant, it just keeps its normal feminine article la.

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