Marie voit le cochon.

Voit means sees. It comes from the verb voir, which means to see.

In Marie voit le cochon, voit is the third-person singular form, used with Marie = she.

A few forms of voir in the present tense are:

• je vois = I see
• tu vois = you see
• il / elle voit = he / she sees
• nous voyons = we see
• vous voyez = you see
• ils / elles voient = they see

Because voir is the infinitive, meaning to see. In a normal sentence with a subject, French usually uses a conjugated verb, not the infinitive.

So:

• voir = to see
• Marie voit = Marie sees

This is similar to English:

• to see is not the same as
• she sees

French word order here is the same basic pattern as English:

subject + verb + object

So:

• Marie = subject
• voit = verb
• le cochon = object

That makes:

• Marie voit le cochon = Marie sees the pig

This is a very common and basic French sentence structure.

Le is the masculine singular definite article, meaning the.

So:

• le cochon = the pig

French nouns normally need an article much more often than English nouns do. You usually do not just say cochon by itself in a sentence like this.

Other forms of the in French are:

• le for masculine singular
• la for feminine singular
• l’ before a vowel sound
• les for plural

You know because it uses the article le:

• le cochon = the pig

That tells you cochon is a masculine noun.

In French, grammatical gender is part of the noun, and the article has to match it. Gender does not necessarily mean the animal is biologically male in this kind of sentence; it is mainly a grammar feature of the word.

Because Marie is a proper noun (a person’s name). In French, names usually do not take an article in ordinary sentences.

So you say:

• Marie voit le cochon

not:

• La Marie voit le cochon in standard basic usage

This is similar to English, where we say Marie and not the Marie.

A simple pronunciation guide is:

ma-REE vwah luh ko-SHON

A bit more precisely:

• Marie sounds roughly like mah-ree
• voit sounds like vwah
• le often sounds like luh
• cochon sounds roughly like ko-shon, with a French on nasal sound at the end

A useful thing to notice:

• the t in voit is not pronounced
• in normal speech, voit le may sound smoothly connected, but there is no strong English-style stress

No. In voit, the final -t is normally silent.

So voit is pronounced like vwah, not vwatt.

Silent final consonants are very common in French, so this is something learners get used to over time.

In this sentence, cochon means pig.

Depending on context, it can also refer to a hog or pig in a general sense. In some expressions, cochon can have other meanings or connotations, but for a beginner sentence like this, the safest meaning is simply pig.

So here:

• le cochon = the pig

Normally, no. Standard French usually requires the subject to be stated.

So French says:

• Marie voit le cochon or
• Elle voit le cochon

You would not normally just say voit le cochon by itself to mean sees the pig.

This is different from some languages where subject pronouns can be omitted more freely.

Yes. You could say:

• Elle voit le cochon. = She sees the pig.

If the listener already knows that elle refers to Marie, this works perfectly.

Using Marie names the person directly. Using elle refers back to her.

It could be, but it would mean something slightly different.

• le cochon = the pig
• un cochon = a pig

So:

• Marie voit le cochon = Marie sees the pig
• Marie voit un cochon = Marie sees a pig

The sentence you were given uses the definite article, so it refers to a specific pig, not just any pig.