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Voici la gare, et voilà l'hôtel.

Voici la gare, et voilà l'hôtel.
Here is the train station, and there is the hotel.
From Lesson 14:There is / there are (il y a)·French

Questions & Answers about Voici la gare, et voilà l'hôtel.

The current lesson is about il y a (there is). Why does this sentence use voilà instead?
Il y a states that something simply exists (like 'There is a hotel in this town'). Voilà and voici are used when physically pointing things out to someone, as if you are gesturing and saying 'Look, right there is the hotel!'
What is the exact difference between voici and voilà?
Voici means 'here is' and is used for things physically closer to the speaker. Voilà means 'there is' and is used to point out things that are further away.
Why does l'hôtel use l' instead of le?
The word hôtel is masculine, so normally you would use le for 'the'. However, the letter 'h' at the start of hôtel is silent. Because the word begins with a vowel sound, le drops its 'e' and links directly to the noun to become l'hôtel. This makes it smoother to say out loud.
How do I know to use la for gare?
In French, every noun has a grammatical gender, even places. Gare (train station) happens to be feminine, so we use la (the). A helpful hint is that it ends in the letter 'e', which is a common sign of a feminine word, though the best strategy is to memorize the gender along with the vocabulary word!

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