Word
Tu te laves le visage et le cou avant le spectacle.
Meaning
You wash your face and your neck before the show.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Tu te laves le visage et le cou avant le spectacle.
tu
you (informal singular)
et
and
se laver
to wash
le visage
the face
Questions & Answers about Tu te laves le visage et le cou avant le spectacle.
Why does the sentence use le visage and le cou instead of ton visage and ton cou?
In French, you typically don't use possessive adjectives like ton or ma with body parts when it is obvious who they belong to. Instead, you use the definite article (le, la, or les). Because you are performing the action on yourself, using a possessive word feels redundant to a French speaker.
If le just means "the", how do we know it translates to "your" face and "your" neck?
The reflexive pronoun te does that job! Literally, the sentence is structured as "You wash to yourself the face and the neck." By combining the reflexive pronoun te with the definite articles le, French tells us exactly whose body parts are involved.
Could I just leave out the te and say Tu laves le visage?
Why use avant for "before" here instead of devant?