Learn French: Nous arrêtons le travail à midi.

Nous arrêtons le travail à midi.

We stop work at noon.

Breakdown of Nous arrêtons le travail à midi.

to stop (something), to arrest

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Questions & Answers about Nous arrêtons le travail à midi.

Does arrêter follow the same rules as the regular -ir verbs we are learning?

No, because arrêter ends in -er, it belongs to the first group of regular verbs. Notice that its nous form just ends in -ons (nous arrêtons). The regular -ir verbs you are learning right now add an extra -iss- before the ending, making it -issons (like nous finissons).

Why does arrêtons have a little hat on the e?

The circumflex accent on the ê often shows that the letter s used to be there in old French. You can see this shared history in the English word arrest! It does not change how the verb conjugates.

Why is there a le before travail? In English we just say stop work.

In French, nouns almost always need an article like le, la, or les in front of them. English often drops the article for general concepts or routines like work or school, but French requires it.

Wait, isn't the French word for work travailler?

Travailler is the action verb meaning to work, as in nous travaillons (we work). In this sentence, we need a noun because it is the thing being stopped. Le travail is the noun form, meaning the work or the job.