Learn French: Je prends le métro pour aller au bureau. - I take the subway to go to the office.

Je prends le métro pour aller au bureau.

I take the subway to go to the office.

Breakdown of Je prends le métro pour aller au bureau.

pour

for

le bureau

the office / the desk

to the / at the (masculine singular)

Questions & Answers about Je prends le métro pour aller au bureau.

Why does prends end in an "s" if it's a je (I) verb?

prendre (to take) is an irregular verb. To form the je (I) and tu (you, singular informal) forms, you keep the "d" from the stem and add an "s", making it prends. It does not follow the standard rules for regular verbs.

Do I pronounce the "d" and "s" at the end of prends?

No, both the d and the s are silent. The word ends with a nasal vowel sound, pronounced roughly like "prahn".

Why do we use pour before aller?

In English, we usually just say "to go" to express our purpose (I take the subway in order to go to the office). In French, whenever you want to express the reason or purpose for doing an action, you use pour followed by the infinitive (unconjugated) verb. pour aller translates directly to "in order to go".

I learned that à means "to". Why does it say au bureau instead of à le bureau?

bureau (office) is a masculine noun, so "the office" is le bureau. However, in French, whenever the preposition à is followed directly by le, the two words must combine into the single word au. You will never see à le written together!