Breakdown of Les enfants dorment dans le train.
l'enfant
the child
dans
in, inside
le train
the train
dormir
to sleep
Questions & Answers about Les enfants dorment dans le train.
Why does dormir become dorment for "the children"?
Dormir (to sleep) is an irregular -ir verb. With regular -ir verbs (like finir), you add an "iss" sound before the plural endings. But for irregular verbs like dormir, partir, and sortir, you just drop the -ir to get the stem (dorm-) and add standard plural endings. For "they" (les enfants), the ending is -ent, making it dorment.
Do I pronounce the -ent at the end of dorment?
The translation says "are sleeping". Why doesn't the French sentence use a word for "are"?
French doesn't have a separate "is doing" or "are doing" tense (the present continuous). The simple present tense covers both meanings! Les enfants dorment translates to both "the children sleep" and "the children are sleeping." Never try to translate "are sleeping" word-for-word as sont dorment—that sounds completely incorrect to French ears.
How do I pronounce Les enfants? Is there a liaison?