Learn French: Nous mangeons une pizza ce soir. - We are eating a pizza this evening.

Nous mangeons une pizza ce soir.

We are eating a pizza this evening.

Breakdown of Nous mangeons une pizza ce soir.

nous

we / us (object pronoun)

Questions & Answers about Nous mangeons une pizza ce soir.

Why is there an extra 'e' in mangeons?

Verbs ending in -ger like manger need to keep their soft 'g' sound before the vowels 'a' or 'o'. If we simply wrote mangons, it would be pronounced with a hard 'g' like in the English word 'go'. We add the 'e' to maintain the correct soft pronunciation in mangeons.

The English translation says 'We are eating', but isn't mangeons just 'we eat'?

French doesn't have a separate present continuous tense like English does. Nous mangeons translates to both 'we eat' as a general habit and 'we are eating' at this very moment. The context of the sentence tells you which meaning is intended.

Why does the sentence use the present tense if ce soir is in the future?

Just like in English, you can use the French present tense to talk about a firmly planned event in the near future. The time phrase ce soir makes it clear the action hasn't happened yet. You could also use the near future tense and say Nous allons manger une pizza.

Why is it ce soir and not cette soir?

The word for evening, soir, is a masculine noun in French. Because of this, you must use the masculine word for 'this', which is ce, rather than the feminine cette.