L’acteur regarde le film.

The actor watches the film.

Breakdown of L’acteur regarde le film.

• regarder: to watch
• le film: the film
• l’acteur: the actor

Questions & Answers about L’acteur regarde le film.

Why is l’acteur written with an apostrophe instead of le acteur?

In French, when the definite article le or la comes before a word that begins with a vowel (or a mute h), you use elision: you drop the vowel in the article and replace it with an apostrophe. So le acteur becomes l’acteur to make it easier to pronounce.

Why doesn’t regarde end in -s or -nt?

Because regarde is the third-person singular form of the verb regarder in the présent de l’indicatif. The full set is:
• je regarde
• tu regardes
• il/elle/on regarde
• nous regardons
• vous regardez
• ils/elles regardent
Only tu takes -es and ils/elles take -ent.

Why is there no preposition between regarde and le film?

Regarder is a transitive verb that directly takes a direct object in French. Unlike English (“watch a movie”), you do not insert a preposition. You simply say regarder le film.

Why is the simple present used here instead of a continuous form like “is watching”?

French uses the présent de l’indicatif both for habitual actions and for ongoing actions. If you want to emphasize that it is happening right now, you can use the périphrase être en train de:
L’acteur est en train de regarder le film.

How would you ask “What is the actor watching?” in French?

Two common ways:
• Qu’est-ce que l’acteur regarde ? (everyday spoken style)
• Que regarde l’acteur ? (more formal or written style)

What is the gender of acteur and film, and why do we use l’ vs. le?

Both acteur and film are masculine nouns:
• acteur ends in -eur, a typical masculine ending (though not always).
• film is borrowed from English and is masculine by convention.
For acteur, since it starts with a vowel sound, le elides to l’. For film, we keep le.

How do you pronounce l’acteur and le film?

Approximate IPA:
• l’acteur: /lak.tœʁ/
• le film: /lə film/
Note the French “r” is a guttural sound (back of the throat), and the vowel œ in acteur is not in English but is like the “u” in “burn” (without the r-coloring).