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Questions & Answers about Marie est une amie fiable.
Why une amie instead of un ami?
Because Marie is female. In French you must match gender: ami becomes amie and the indefinite article un changes to une.
Why is the article une necessary here? In English we say “Marie is a reliable friend” and sometimes we drop “a” after “is.”
French requires an article when you use être + noun to describe or classify someone. Just as English uses a, French uses une before amie to indicate that Marie belongs to the category of “reliable friends.”
Why is the adjective fiable placed after the noun amie instead of before it?
Most French adjectives follow the noun they modify. Only a small set of very common adjectives (like beau, grand, vieux) appear before. Fiable belongs to the larger group of adjectives that come after the noun, hence amie fiable.
Why doesn’t fiable change form for gender? Shouldn’t it be different for masculine and feminine?
Fiable ends in -able, which is the same in both masculine and feminine singular. There is no extra -e to add for the feminine. Only the plural form adds an -s at the end (e.g., amies fiables).
How would you make this sentence plural to talk about two or more people?
You would pluralize everything: subject, article, noun, adjective. For example:
« Marie et Sophie sont des amies fiables. »
Here sont replaces est, des is the plural indefinite article, amies and fiables both take -s.
How do you ask “Is Marie a reliable friend?” in French?
Two common ways:
1) Using est-ce que: « Est-ce que Marie est une amie fiable ? »
2) By inversion: « Marie est-elle une amie fiable ? »
Note the hyphen in inversion and the added -elle.
How do you pronounce « Marie est une amie fiable »?
In IPA roughly: /ma.ʁi ɛt‿yn a.mi fja.bl/.
– You pronounce the t in est as a liaison with une: [ɛt‿yn].
– No liaison is needed before fiable because it starts with a consonant sound (/f/).