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Elle travaille au cinquième étage.

Elle travaille au cinquième étage.
She works on the fifth floor.
From Lesson 231:Ordinal numbers·French

Breakdown of Elle travaille au cinquième étage.

elle
she
travailler
to work
l'étage
the floor, a story (m)
cinquième
fifth

Questions & Answers about Elle travaille au cinquième étage.

Why does the sentence use au instead of sur le for "on the"?
In English, you say someone works "on" a floor, but in French, the standard preposition for this is à (at/to). Because the noun étage is masculine, à combines with le to become au.
Is étage masculine or feminine? It ends in an "e".
It is masculine (un étage). While many words ending in "e" are feminine, words ending in the suffix -age are almost always masculine in French. Other common examples include le fromage (cheese) and le voyage (trip).
Why is there an extra u in cinquième?
To make an ordinal number (like "fourth" or "tenth"), you normally add -ième to the base number. However, if you added it directly to cinq (cinqième), it would look awkward and might prompt a pronunciation change. Adding the u ensures the hard "k" sound remains intact, just like in cinquante (fifty).
If I go to the cinquième étage in France, is it the exact same level as the fifth floor in the US?
Not usually! In France, the ground floor is called le rez-de-chaussée. The floor above that is le premier étage (the first floor). Because they start counting one floor higher than Americans do, the cinquième étage is actually the sixth floor in American terms.

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