J'appelle la police maintenant.

I am calling the police now.

Breakdown of J'appelle la police maintenant.

• je: I
• maintenant: now
• appeler: to call
• la police: the police

Questions & Answers about J'appelle la police maintenant.

Why is je written as j' in j'appelle?

In French, when je comes before a verb that starts with a vowel or mute h, you drop the e and replace it with an apostrophe to make pronunciation smoother. This process is called elision. Without elision you’d have an awkward je appelle, so it becomes j'appelle.

Why is the verb appeler conjugated j'appelle with a double p and double l?

Appeler is a so-called “-eler” stem-changing verb. In the singular forms (je, tu, il/elle/on) and the third-person plural (ils/elles), the consonant doubles to keep the pronunciation consistent. The pattern looks like this:
• je j'appelle
• tu appelles
• il/elle appelle
• nous appelons (no doubling here)
• vous appelez (no doubling here)
• ils/elles appellent

How do you pronounce J'appelle?

Phonetically, J'appelle is pronounced [ʒa.pɛl].
• j' → [ʒ] (like the “s” in “vision”)
• a → [a] (an open “ah” sound)
• pelle → [pɛl] (“p” + “eh” + “l”)
The final e in appelle is silent; you hear just two syllables.

Why isn’t there any preposition like à before la police?

The verb appeler (when meaning “to phone/call someone”) is a direct-object verb in French. You say appeler quelqu’un without à. By contrast, the verb téléphoner is intransitive and takes à: je téléphone à la police. Both are correct, but with appeler you don’t add à.

Why is police feminine and why do we use the article la here?

In French, la police refers to the institution or the force and is always feminine singular. You simply memorize that police is a feminine noun. If you wanted to emphasize individual officers, you’d say les policiers (masculine plural) or les policières (feminine plural).

Why is the present tense used? Could I say je vais appeler la police instead?

French often uses the simple present to describe actions happening right now—there’s no separate progressive form like English’s “I am calling.” So J'appelle la police maintenant covers both “I call” and “I am calling.”
You can use the futur proche (je vais appeler) to stress “I’m going to call”:
• J'appelle la police maintenant. (I’m calling the police right now.)
• Je vais appeler la police maintenant. (I’m about to call the police now / I’m going to call them.)

Why is maintenant placed at the end? Can I move it?

Time adverbs in French often come right after the verb, so j'appelle la police maintenant is perfectly natural. You can also move maintenant to the beginning for emphasis:
• Maintenant, j'appelle la police.
Or place it between verb and object, though this is slightly less common in speech:
• J'appelle maintenant la police.
All three are grammatically correct; nuance and emphasis shift slightly.