Learn French: Ils jouaient près de l'escalier, alors j'ai fermé la barrière de peur qu'ils tombent. - They were playing near the stairs, so I closed the gate for fear that they might fall.

Word

Ils jouaient près de l'escalier, alors j'ai fermé la barrière de peur qu'ils tombent.

Meaning

They were playing near the stairs, so I closed the gate for fear that they might fall.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

French

Lesson

For fear that (de peur que)

Breakdown of Ils jouaient près de l'escalier, alors j'ai fermé la barrière de peur qu'ils tombent.

ils

they (masculine/mixed)

Questions & Answers about Ils jouaient près de l'escalier, alors j'ai fermé la barrière de peur qu'ils tombent.

Since tombent looks exactly like the present indicative, how do we know it's in the subjunctive here?

For regular -er verbs like tomber, the present indicative and present subjunctive share the exact same form for the ils/elles conjugation. However, because it directly follows the conjunction de peur que (for fear that), which always triggers the subjunctive, we know it is grammatically in the subjunctive mood here.

Shouldn't there be a ne before tombent? I often see de peur qu'ils ne tombent.

You are thinking of the 'ne explétif', a stylistic, non-negative ne that traditionally follows de peur que and de crainte que. In formal written French, you would indeed write de peur qu'ils ne tombent. However, in everyday spoken French, this extra ne is almost always dropped.

Why is escalier singular here when the English translation says 'stairs'?

In French, un escalier refers to an entire flight of stairs or a staircase, so it is usually singular. While the plural les escaliers exists and is sometimes used, the singular is the most standard way to refer to the structure as a single unit.

Why does the sentence switch from the imperfect (jouaient) to the passé composé (ai fermé)?