Ma mère cuisine des haricots verts.

From Lesson 253:Fruit and vegetables·French

Breakdown of Ma mère cuisine des haricots verts.

mon
my
cuisiner
to cook
la mère
the mother
vert
green
le haricot
the bean

Questions & Answers about Ma mère cuisine des haricots verts.

Why isn't there a spoken link (liaison) between des and haricots?
The word haricot begins with an h aspiré (aspirated h). Even though the letter h is silent in French, this specific type of h acts like a consonant and blocks the liaison. You pronounce it as des haricots without the z sound bridging the two words.
Why use des here instead of les?
The mother is cooking an unspecified amount of green beans, so we use des, which translates to some. If the sentence were talking about green beans in a general sense, like saying she loves green beans, you would use the definite article instead: Elle aime les haricots verts.
Isn't cuisine the French word for kitchen?
It is! La cuisine means the kitchen or the cooking. However, in this sentence, cuisine is the verb cuisiner (to cook), conjugated in the present tense for ma mère (which acts as she/elle).
Why is verts placed after haricots?
In French, adjectives that describe color always go directly after the noun. Because haricots is masculine and plural, the adjective verts also takes the masculine plural form by adding an s.

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