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Marie joue avec le chat.

Marie joue avec le chat.
Marie plays with the cat.
FromLesson 14inHardcore French

Breakdown of Marie joue avec le chat.

Marie
Marie
le chat
the cat
avec
with
jouer
to play

Questions & Answers about Marie joue avec le chat.

What does joue mean, and which tense of the verb is it in?
Joue is the third-person singular present tense form of jouer, which means "to play." It indicates that Marie is engaged in playing right now.
What role does avec serve in the sentence?
Avec is a preposition that means "with." It connects the verb joue to the noun chat, showing that Marie is playing with the cat.
Why is the definite article le used before chat, and what does it tell us about the noun?
The article le is a definite article used with masculine nouns in French. Since chat is masculine, le is used to mean "the cat," referring to a specific or known cat.
How is the sentence structured, and how does it compare to an English sentence?
The sentence follows a standard Subject-Verb-Complement order—Marie (subject) + joue (verb) + avec le chat (prepositional phrase). This structure is quite similar to English, where the equivalent sentence would be "Marie plays with the cat."
If the subject were different, how would the verb change to maintain correct subject-verb agreement?
The verb must always agree with its subject. For example, if the subject were plural such as Marie et Pierre, the sentence would change to Marie et Pierre jouent avec le chat with jouent as the plural form of joue.
AI Language TutorTry it ↗
“How does grammatical gender work in French?”
Every French noun is either masculine or feminine, and this affects the articles and adjectives used with it. "Le" is used with masculine nouns and "la" with feminine ones. Adjectives also change form to match — for example, "petit" (masc.) becomes "petite" (fem.).

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