La cantimplora és plena.

to be

Breakdown of La cantimplora és plena.

• ple: full
• la cantimplora: the canteen or water flask

Questions & Answers about La cantimplora és plena.

What does cantimplora mean exactly?

It means a canteen, flask, or water bottle—the kind you carry with you.

A useful note for English speakers: in some varieties of English, canteen can mean a cafeteria, but cantimplora does not mean that. Here it means the container you drink from.

Why is there la at the beginning?

La is the feminine singular definite article, so it means the.

Catalan nouns have grammatical gender, and cantimplora is feminine. That is why you get:

• la cantimplora = the canteen
• not el cantimplora

English does not usually force you to think about noun gender, but Catalan does.

Why is it és and not just es?

És with an accent is the 3rd person singular of ser, so it means is.

The accent matters because es without an accent is a different word: it is a pronoun used in reflexive and other constructions.

So:

• és = is
• es = a pronoun, not the verb is