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Mes amies sont allées à la piscine.

Mes amies sont allées à la piscine.
My friends went to the swimming pool.
From Lesson 127:Past participle agreement with the subject (elles sont allées)·French

Questions & Answers about Mes amies sont allées à la piscine.

Why does allées have an extra -es at the end?
Because it's in the passé composé using the helping verb être (sont). When a verb uses être, its past participle has to match the subject in gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural). The subject Mes amies is a group of women (feminine plural), so we add an -e for feminine and an -s for plural to the base word allé.
How do we know from the French sentence that the friends are female?
You can tell by the spelling! The noun amies has a feminine -e before the plural -s. Also, the verb reflects this with the spelling allées. If the group was all male, or a mix of males and females, the sentence would use the masculine plural forms: Mes amis sont allés à la piscine.
Why do we use sont instead of ont to say "went"?
Most French verbs use avoir (to have) to form the passé composé, but aller (to go) is one of the special verbs that use être (to be) instead. These are typically verbs showing motion or a change of state, often remembered by learners using the DR & MRS VANDERTRAMP list.
Why is it à la piscine?
To say "to the" in French, you use à plus the definite article. Since piscine (swimming pool) is a feminine noun, we use à la. If they had gone to a masculine place like the park (le parc), à and le would combine into au instead (au parc).

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