Breakdown of Tu sens la volaille qui cuit derrière ce stand ?
tu
you (informal singular)
qui
who
ce
this (before a noun)
derrière
behind
Questions & Answers about Tu sens la volaille qui cuit derrière ce stand ?
Why use qui cuit instead of a present participle like cuisant for "cooking"?
In French, when you use a verb of perception (like sentir, voir, or entendre), you often follow it with a direct object and a qui relative clause to describe an action in progress. While English uses the "-ing" form ("the poultry cooking"), French uses qui + a conjugated verb to capture that same ongoing, "right now" feeling.
Could I just use the infinitive and say Tu sens la volaille cuire?
Yes, using the infinitive after a perception verb is also grammatically correct. However, using qui + a conjugated verb is extremely common in everyday French to strongly emphasize that the action is actively unfolding at the exact moment of perception.
I learned that "to cook" is faire cuire. Why doesn't this sentence use qui fait cuire?
You use faire cuire when a person is actively cooking something (a transitive action), like in Je fais cuire la volaille (I am cooking the poultry). But when the food itself is the subject undergoing the cooking process (an intransitive action), you just use cuire. Since la volaille is the subject of the qui clause here, it is doing the cooking, so qui cuit is correct.
Since stand is an English word, do French speakers pronounce it like in English?