Question 1

Why does the sentence use sera for 'will be'? I thought future tense adds endings to the infinitive.

Accepted Answer

The verb être (to be) is highly irregular. Instead of adding endings to its infinitive, it uses the special future stem ser-. Because the subject is l'astronaute (equivalent to il or elle), we add the standard -a ending to get sera (will be).

Question 2

Both verbs are in the future tense, so why does voyagera include its whole infinitive while sera doesn't?

Accepted Answer

This shows the difference between regular and irregular future stems. voyagera is regular, so you take the full infinitive voyager and add the future ending -a. But sera comes from être, which is irregular. You must memorize its special stem (ser-) and attach the -a ending directly to that.

Question 3

How do we know if the astronaut in this sentence is a man or a woman?

Accepted Answer

We look at the adjective at the end of the sentence! The noun astronaute is spelled the exact same way for a man or a woman (un astronaute or une astronaute). However, the adjective is the masculine prêt (ready). If it were a female astronaut, the sentence would end with the feminine form, prête.

Question 4

Why do we use qui here instead of que?

Accepted Answer

We use the relative pronoun qui when the person or thing we are talking about is the subject of the following verb. Since the astronaut is the one doing the traveling, we use qui. If the astronaut were the object of the action (like 'the astronaut that I met'), we would use que.

L'astronaute qui voyagera dans l'espace sera prêt.

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