Learn French: La sage-femme parle aux mères sourdes-muettes. - The midwife speaks to the deaf-mute mothers.

La sage-femme parle aux mères sourdes-muettes.

The midwife speaks to the deaf-mute mothers.

Breakdown of La sage-femme parle aux mères sourdes-muettes.

parler

to speak

at / to / in (general locations) / about (what one thinks about / reacts to)

him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)

la mère

the mother

Questions & Answers about La sage-femme parle aux mères sourdes-muettes.

Why do both halves of sourdes-muettes have an -es at the end?

Because both sourd (deaf) and muet (mute) are adjectives. When a compound adjective is made of two adjectives (Adjective + Adjective), both parts must agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. Here, they match the feminine plural noun mères.

If the first part of the compound adjective were an adverb, would it still agree with mères?

No. In an Adverb + Adjective compound, the adverb part is invariable (it never changes). For example, if you wanted to say "newly born mothers" (nouveau-nées), the word nouveau acts as an adverb meaning "newly" and stays singular masculine, while nées agrees with mères.

The word sage-femme (midwife) has a hyphen too. Does it follow the same agreement rules?

Sage-femme is a compound noun, not an adjective. It is made of an adjective (sage, meaning "wise") and a noun (femme). If you wanted to talk about multiple midwives, both parts would take an -s (les sages-femmes) because both nouns and adjectives can be pluralized.

A quick refresher: why do we use aux mères instead of just à les mères?

The verb parler requires the preposition à when indicating who you are speaking to (parler à quelqu'un). In French, the preposition à and the plural definite article les can never sit next to each other; they must always contract to form aux.