Question 1

Why does le nôtre have an accent on the "o"?

Accepted Answer

Le nôtre is a possessive pronoun meaning "ours", which replaces a noun. The adjective for "our" (which goes in front of a noun) is notre. In French, the pronouns le nôtre (ours) and le vôtre (yours) always take a circumflex accent on the "o". This accent also changes the pronunciation: the "o" in le nôtre sounds like a long "oh", whereas the "o" in notre is short.

Question 2

Why do we use le nôtre here instead of la nôtre?

Accepted Answer

Possessive pronouns have to match the gender and number of the noun they are replacing. Here, le nôtre replaces the idea of "our flight" (notre vol). Because the noun vol is masculine and singular, we must use the masculine singular pronoun le nôtre.

Question 3

Why is "late" translated as en retard instead of just tard?

Accepted Answer

In French, tard is only used to describe the time of day, such as saying "it is late" (il est tard). When talking about a person or a vehicle (like votre vol) arriving behind schedule, you must use the expression être en retard, which literally means "to be in delay".

Question 4

If the sentence started with "Is yours late", how would we say it?

Accepted Answer

You would use the possessive pronoun le vôtre (yours) to replace votre vol. If we already knew we were talking about flights, the beginning of the sentence would become: Est-ce que le vôtre est en retard ?

Est-ce que votre vol est en retard comme le nôtre ?

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