Breakdown of Nous allons boire du champagne ce soir.
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
boire
to drink
aller
to go
ce soir
tonight
Questions & Answers about Nous allons boire du champagne ce soir.
Why do we say allons boire instead of using a future tense word?
This sentence uses the futur proche (near future). Just like in English, you form it by combining the present tense of aller (to go) with an infinitive verb. Here, nous allons (we are going) is paired with boire (to drink). This structure is very common in everyday French for plans in the near future.
Why is there a du before champagne?
In French, nouns almost always need an article. Because champagne is a liquid and you are drinking an unspecified amount of it, you use the partitive article du (which is a mandatory contraction of de + le). It translates to drinking some champagne.
Why is it ce soir to mean tonight?
Soir means evening, and it is a masculine noun. To say this evening, you use the masculine demonstrative adjective ce. French doesn't have a single specific word for tonight, so ce soir (literally: this evening) is the standard way to say it.
Why isn't boire conjugated here?
When two verbs are placed back-to-back in French, the first one is conjugated and the second one remains in the infinitive (the dictionary form). Because allons is already conjugated to match nous, boire stays in its infinitive form.