Breakdown of Si l'extraterrestre visitait notre système solaire, il serait surpris.
être
to be
il
he
visiter
to visit
notre
our (singular and plural forms: notre, nos)
si
if
surpris
surprised
l'extraterrestre
the alien (m)
le système
the system
solaire
solar
Questions & Answers about Si l'extraterrestre visitait notre système solaire, il serait surpris.
Why do we use visitait (imperfect) instead of the present tense here?
This sentence is a second conditional, describing a hypothetical situation. In French, similar to English (If the alien visited...), we use the imperfect tense (l'imparfait) after si to show the action is unlikely or imaginary, followed by the conditional (serait) in the second half of the sentence.
Why isn't si l'extraterrestre shortened with an apostrophe, like s'il?
The word si only drops its -i and uses an apostrophe when it is directly followed by il or ils (making s'il or s'ils). Before any other vowel, including the l' in l'extraterrestre, the -i remains intact.
Does surpris have an -s at the end because it is plural?
No, surpris is singular here, referring to one alien (il). The base form of the adjective (and past participle) surpris naturally ends in an -s even in the masculine singular. If the alien were female (elle), it would become surprise.
Is système feminine since it ends in -e?
Actually, système is masculine (un système). While many words ending in -e are feminine, several common words ending in -ème (like problème, thème, and système) are masculine. The words notre and solaire are spelled the same for both masculine and feminine nouns, so they do not give the gender away here!
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