Ma grand-mère et mon grand-père chantent ensemble.

my

Breakdown of Ma grand-mère et mon grand-père chantent ensemble.

• et: and
• ma: my
• le grand-père: the grandfather
• la grand-mère: the grandmother
• chanter: to sing
• ensemble: together

Questions & Answers about Ma grand-mère et mon grand-père chantent ensemble.

Why do we use chantent instead of another form of the verb chanter?

Because ma grand-mère et mon grand-père form a plural subject in French. When you have a plural subject (they), you need the third-person plural form ils/elles chantent. The -ent ending is a common marker for ils/elles in the present tense, even though it is generally not pronounced.

Why is it ma grand-mère but mon grand-père?

French has grammatical gender for nouns. Grand-mère is feminine, so we use the feminine possessive adjective ma. Grand-père is masculine, so we use mon. In French, the possessive adjective must agree in gender (and number) with the noun it refers to, not the speaker.

How do we pronounce chantent in this sentence?

In casual French pronunciation, you typically hear chan-t with a nasal an and a silent -ent ending. So it sounds roughly like shon-t. The final -ent in third-person plural present-tense verbs is often silent.

Why is ensemble placed at the end of the sentence?

In French, adverbs like ensemble can appear after the verb. It’s common to put ensemble (together) after the action it modifies. You could place it in other positions, but chantent ensemble is very natural and commonly used.

Does et always mean and?

Yes, et is the primary French conjunction for and. It connects two or more words or phrases. In this sentence, it connects ma grand-mère and mon grand-père as the people doing the action of singing.