Question 1

Why are there two words (a chanté) for the English word "sang"?

Accepted Answer

In French, the most common past tense is the passé composé. It usually needs two parts: a helper verb (here, a from the verb avoir, meaning "has") and a past action word called a past participle (here, chanté). So, the French sentence literally says "has sung".

Question 2

How do you form the past participle chanté?

Accepted Answer

The dictionary form of the verb "to sing" is chanter. Because it is a regular verb that ends in -er, you create its past participle by dropping the -er and adding an -é with an accent.

Question 3

Why do we use ce before jeu?

Accepted Answer

Ce is a demonstrative adjective that means "this" or "that". You use ce here because jeu (game) is a masculine noun. If the noun were feminine, you would use cette instead.

Question 4

Does l'enfant refer to a boy or a girl here?

Accepted Answer

We actually can't tell from this sentence! Because the word enfant starts with a vowel sound, both le (masculine "the") and la (feminine "the") shrink to l' to make the pronunciation smoother. The child could be either a boy or a girl.

L'enfant a chanté une chanson pour ce jeu.

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