Learn French: Le bébé n'a pas peur. - The baby is not afraid.

Le bébé n'a pas peur.

The baby is not afraid.

Breakdown of Le bébé n'a pas peur.

avoir

to have

not (used before the verb)

pas

not (used after the verb)

le bébé

the baby

Questions & Answers about Le bébé n'a pas peur.

Why does the French sentence use a (has) instead of a word for "is"?

In English, we use the verb "to be" for feelings (like "is afraid"). In French, you use avoir (to have) for many physical states and feelings. The expression is avoir peur (literally "to have fear"). Since le bébé acts as a "he" or "it", we use the matching form of avoir, which is a.

Why is it n'a pas and not ne a pas?

To make a sentence negative, you put ne and pas around the verb. But because the verb a starts with a vowel, the e in ne gets dropped to make pronunciation smoother. This turns ne a pas into n'a pas.

Why isn't there a word like une or la before peur?

When using these special avoir expressions for feelings and states (like avoir faim for hunger or avoir soif for thirst), you don't use an article (like un, une, le, or la). You just put the noun directly after the verb.

Does anything change if the baby is a girl?