Les passants regardant la vitrine sont des touristes.

Questions & Answers about Les passants regardant la vitrine sont des touristes.

Could I say qui regardent instead of regardant?
Yes! regardant is the present participle, and here it replaces the relative clause qui regardent (who are looking). Using the present participle makes the sentence a bit more concise and is a great alternative to repeating qui.
Why does passants have an -s for plural, but regardant doesn't? Both end in -ant!
Excellent catch. passants is being used as a noun here (passersby), and nouns must agree in number, so it gets an -s. However, regardant is a present participle describing an action. When used to replace a relative clause, the present participle is invariable, meaning it never changes form to match gender or number.
The English translation says "looking at", but there is no word for "at" after regardant. Why?
The French verb regarder (and its participle regardant) directly translates to "to look at" or "to watch." The preposition "at" is already built into the meaning of the verb, so you do not add a word like à after it.
Why is it sont des touristes and not just sont touristes?
In French, you generally cannot put a noun in a sentence without an article. While you sometimes drop the article to state a single person's profession (like elle est médecin), here we are identifying a group of people with a standard noun, so we need the plural indefinite article des.

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