Si nous évitons leur chat noir, notre équipe gagnera.
If we avoid their black cat, our team will win.
Breakdown of Si nous évitons leur chat noir, notre équipe gagnera.
le chat
the cat
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
notre
our (singular and plural forms: notre, nos)
l'équipe
the team (f)
leur
their (singular and plural forms: leur, leurs)
gagner
to earn / to win
si
if
noir
black
éviter
to avoid
Questions & Answers about Si nous évitons leur chat noir, notre équipe gagnera.
Why is évitons in the present tense if the sentence is about something happening in the future?
In French first conditional sentences, you use the present tense for the condition (the "if" part) and the future tense for the result. It works exactly like English: "If we avoid (present)... our team will win (future)." That's why we pair si nous évitons with the future tense gagnera.
How do we get the future tense form gagnera?
Gagnera is the futur simple of the regular verb gagner (to win). To form it, you take the full infinitive (gagner) and add the future ending. Since the subject notre équipe (our team) is a singular "it" (elle), the correct ending is -a.
Since "our team" has multiple people, why isn't the verb plural like gagneront?
Why is it leur chat without an -s on leur if "their" refers to multiple people?
Leur means "their." In French, possessive adjectives change to match the thing being owned, not the people who own it. Because the opposing team only has one black cat, we use the singular leur. If we were avoiding multiple cats, we would add an -s: leurs chats noirs.
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