Breakdown of Marie parle souvent de son projet professionnel et de son futur en France.
Questions & Answers about Marie parle souvent de son projet professionnel et de son futur en France.
In French, possessive adjectives (son / sa / ses) agree with the gender and number of the noun possessed, not with the person who owns it.
- projet is a masculine noun: un projet
- Therefore, you must use son (masculine singular): son projet
- Marie being female does not change this.
So we say:
- son projet (her/his project) — because projet is masculine
- sa maison (her/his house) — because maison is feminine
- ses amis (her/his friends) — because amis is plural
The verb parler works differently depending on what comes after it.
parler de + thing / topic = to talk about something
- Marie parle de son projet.
Marie talks about her project.
- Marie parle de son projet.
parler à + person = to speak to someone
- Marie parle à son ami.
Marie speaks to her friend.
- Marie parle à son ami.
parler sur exists but is rare and different; it can mean:
- to speak badly or behind someone’s back:
Il parle sur elle. = He gossips / speaks badly about her. - or in some very specific, technical contexts (e.g. “a talk on X” in conference programs), but everyday French uses parler de for “talk about”.
- to speak badly or behind someone’s back:
In your sentence, Marie is talking about topics (her project and her future), so parler de is the correct structure:
parler de son projet, parler de son futur.
In French, most common adverbs of frequency (souvent, toujours, rarement, etc.) are usually placed after the conjugated verb:
- Marie parle souvent de son projet.
Marie often talks about her project.
Other positions:
- Marie, elle parle souvent de son projet.
(adding elle for emphasis; still fine) - Marie parle de son projet souvent.
Possible in spoken French, but sounds less natural and can put a slight emphasis on souvent. - Marie souvent parle de son projet.
This sounds wrong or very marked/poetic; avoid it in normal French.
So the neutral, natural word order is:
Subject + verb + adverb + rest of sentence
→ Marie parle souvent de son projet…
In French, most adjectives normally come after the noun:
- un projet professionnel = a professional project / career plan
- un livre intéressant = an interesting book
- une décision importante = an important decision
There are some common adjectives that go before the noun (e.g. beau, grand, petit, jeune, vieux, bon, mauvais, nouveau), but professionnel is not one of them. So:
- ✅ un projet professionnel
- ❌ un professionnel projet
Un projet professionnel is a very common French expression. It usually means:
- your career plan
- your professional goals
- how you imagine your future job / career path
It’s slightly broader than just “career plan”; it can include:
- what field you want to work in
- what kind of job you want
- what studies or training you need
- where you might want to live and work
You might also see plan de carrière, but that often sounds a bit more formal or strategic. Projet professionnel is the everyday, standard expression, especially in education and job‑coaching contexts.
When you coordinate two complements that both depend on the same preposition in French, you can omit the preposition before the second element in some cases, but often it sounds clearer and more natural to repeat it.
Here, correct and natural is:
- Marie parle souvent de son projet professionnel et de son futur en France.
If you say:
- ❌ Marie parle souvent de son projet professionnel et son futur en France.
this sounds wrong or at least very awkward, because son futur no longer feels clearly linked to parle de. Repeating de makes it clear that she:
- talks about her professional project, and
- talks about her future in France.
So the repetition of de here is both grammatical and natural.
With most country names in French, the usual preposition for “in” is:
- en + feminine country
→ en France, en Espagne, en Italie - au + masculine country
→ au Japon, au Canada, au Portugal - aux + plural country
→ aux États‑Unis, aux Pays‑Bas
France is grammatically feminine, so we say:
- en France = in France
Other options:
- à la France — wrong for location; could appear in different meanings (“to France” as a political entity, poetry, titles, etc., but not for “in France”).
- au France — never correct; au is only for masculine countries.
- dans la France — would sound very strange; used only in rare, very specific contexts like dans la France du 19e siècle (“in 19th‑century France”). For simple location, it’s en France.
Both futur and avenir refer to the future, but they’re used a bit differently.
- avenir = future as something that is coming, more general and personal
- son avenir: her (life) future, what will happen to her
- futur = future as a time ahead, often more neutral or abstract, can sound slightly more formal/technical, but is also used in everyday speech.
In your sentence:
- son futur en France = her future in France (how her life will be in France)
- son avenir en France would also be perfectly natural and maybe a bit more common in some contexts.
So yes, you can say:
- Marie parle souvent de son projet professionnel et de son avenir en France.
The meaning is almost the same; avenir slightly emphasizes her life prospects, futur is a bit more neutral.
Not directly. In French:
- discuter de quelque chose = to discuss something
- You almost always need de after discuter when you mention the topic.
So you could say:
- Marie discute souvent de son projet professionnel et de son futur en France.
This is correct and close in meaning, but:
- parler de is more general: talk about
- discuter de often implies a bit more exchange or debate (with someone), though it can also be quite neutral.
What you cannot say is:
- ❌ Marie discute souvent son projet professionnel.
(Unlike English “discuss something”, French normally needs de.)
So:
- ✅ parler de quelque chose
- ✅ discuter de quelque chose
French present tense (le présent) is used just like in English to describe:
- habitual actions
- general truths
- things happening right now
Here, the sentence describes a habitual action:
- Marie parle souvent…
= Marie often talks…
Even though the topic is the future, the action of talking is something she does regularly now, so the present tense is correct.
It corresponds to English “Marie often talks about…”, which is also in the present.
Pronunciation details:
- souvent is pronounced roughly: [suvɑ̃]
- sou‑ like “soo”
- ‑vent like “von” (nasal an, not exactly like English on)
- The final t in souvent is silent in normal speech.
So you do not say souvant with a [t]. You just end on the nasal vowel sound.
Also note:
- parle → the final e is silent: [paʁl]
- de son → usually links together: [də sɔ̃] (often even [dˈsɔ̃] in fast speech)
You can replace “de son projet professionnel et de son futur en France” with the pronoun en, because en replaces “de + noun”:
- Marie parle souvent de son projet professionnel et de son futur en France.
- Elle en parle souvent.
= She often talks about it.
Some key points:
- en replaces complements introduced by de:
- parler de quelque chose → en parler
- Elle parle de son projet. → Elle en parle.
So if the context is clear (we already know you’re talking about her project and her future in France), you can simply say:
- Elle en parle souvent.