Breakdown of Le chien dort près de l'entrée.
le chien
the dog
dormir
to sleep
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
près de
near to / close to
l'entrée
the entrance (f)
Questions & Answers about Le chien dort près de l'entrée.
Why is it "près de l'" instead of combining the words into "du"?
The preposition being taught here is près de (near). To say "near the entrance", you must add the French word for "the". Because entrée starts with a vowel, you use l'. The word de only ever contracts with le (becoming du) or les (becoming des). It never combines with l' or la, which is why de l' stays as two separate words.
If I wanted to say the dog is sleeping near "the park" (le parc), how would the sentence change?
Why does the English translation say "is sleeping" when the French verb is just "dort"?
In French, the present tense covers both things that happen generally ("sleeps") and things happening right now ("is sleeping"). French doesn't have an exact equivalent to the English "is doing [something]" structure, so dort covers both meanings beautifully!
What is the infinitive (dictionary form) of "dort"?
It comes from the verb dormir (to sleep). It is an irregular verb that drops its 'm' in the singular present tense forms: je dors, tu dors, il/elle dort. However, the 'm' comes back in the plural forms, like nous dormons.
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