Learn Hardcore French: Le professeur demande aux élèves bavards de parler plus doucement. - The teacher asks the talkative students to speak more softly.

When you ask someone to do something, French uses:
- demander à quelqu’un de faire quelque chose
- Literally: to ask *to someone to do something*.

So in this sentence:

demande = asks
à = to
les élèves = the students
→ à + les contracts to aux, giving aux élèves.

You cannot say demander les élèves here; that would sound like “to demand the students”, which is ungrammatical and meaningless in French. The person you are speaking to is introduced by à (→ aux in the plural).

Structure:

Le professeur demande aux élèves de parler…
= The teacher asks the students to speak…

What exactly does aux mean here?

Aux is a contraction of à + les:

à = to
les = the (plural)

So:

aux élèves = à les élèves = to the students.

You must use aux (not à les) because French always contracts à + les into aux.

Why is bavards placed after élèves instead of before, like “talkative students” in English?

In French, most adjectives normally come after the noun:

un élève bavard = a talkative student
des élèves bavards = talkative students

Only a limited group of common adjectives (often about size, beauty, age, goodness, number, etc.) usually come before the noun, e.g.:

un petit élève
un bon élève
un jeune élève

But bavard (talkative/chatty) is not in that special group, so it goes after:

les élèves bavards = the talkative students

What nuance does bavards carry? Is it negative, or just “chatty”?

Bavard basically means talkative, chatty.

Nuance:

It often suggests that someone talks a lot, especially when they shouldn’t (e.g., during class).
It can be mildly negative in a school context: students who chat instead of paying attention.
But in other contexts, it can be neutral or even slightly affectionate, depending on tone.

Forms:

un élève bavard – a talkative (male or generic) student
une élève bavarde – a talkative female student
des élèves bavards – talkative (all-male or mixed group) students
des élèves bavardes – talkative (all-female) students

Why is it demande aux élèves bavards de parler and not demande aux élèves bavards à parler?

With demander plus a verb, French uses the pattern:

demander à quelqu’un de faire quelque chose
- ask someone to do something

So:

demande → asks
aux élèves bavards → to the talkative students
de parler → to speak

You do not say demander à quelqu’un à faire. That pattern is incorrect in standard French. It must be à quelqu’un de faire.

Why is it parler (infinitive) and not parlent?

Parler is in the infinitive because it follows another verb (demande) in a construction where someone is asked to do something.

Structure:

Le professeur demande aux élèves de parler…
- literally: The teacher asks the students *to speak…*

In French:

After many verbs of wishing, asking, planning, etc., you often use de + infinitive when the subject of both actions is the same group/person:
- Je demande aux élèves de parler plus doucement.
- Nous voulons parler avec vous.

If you used parlent, you’d need a full subordinate clause:

Le professeur demande que les élèves bavards parlent plus doucement.

Here parlent is conjugated in the subjunctive after que.

Could we say Le professeur demande que les élèves bavards parlent plus doucement instead? What’s the difference?

Yes, that sentence is grammatically correct:

Le professeur demande que les élèves bavards parlent plus doucement.

Differences:

Grammar
- demander à quelqu’un de + infinitif
  → Le professeur demande aux élèves de parler…
- demander que + subjonctif
  → Le professeur demande que les élèves parlent…
Style
- à quelqu’un de + infinitif is more common, more neutral and direct in everyday speech.
- que + subjonctif is slightly more formal or written in many contexts.
Meaning
- In practice, here the meaning is essentially the same: the teacher is asking the students to speak more quietly.

What exactly does doucement mean, and why not use doux or douce?

Doux / douce are adjectives (describing nouns):

un bruit doux – a soft sound
une voix douce – a soft/gentle voice

Doucement is the adverb form (describing a verb: how someone does something):

parler doucement – to speak softly / quietly / gently
marcher doucement – to walk slowly / gently

In this sentence, doucement modifies the verb parler (how they speak), so you must use the adverb:

parler plus doucement = to speak more softly / more quietly

Using doux or douce here would be wrong, because you’re not describing a noun, but the manner of speaking.

Why is it plus doucement and not just doucement? What does plus add?

Doucement alone would mean:

parler doucement – to speak softly/quietly

Adding plus makes it comparative:

parler plus doucement – to speak more softly / more quietly

So the idea is not just “speak quietly,” but:

“Speak more quietly than you are speaking now.”

Could we also say Le professeur demande aux élèves bavards de parler moins fort? Is there a difference between plus doucement and moins fort?

Yes, you can say:

Le professeur demande aux élèves bavards de parler moins fort.

Meaning and nuance:

parler plus doucement
→ literally “to speak more softly/gently”
→ focuses on softness / gentleness of the voice (often understood as quieter, calmer).
parler moins fort
→ literally “to speak less loudly”
→ more direct about volume (less loud).

In many classroom contexts, they can both translate as “Speak more quietly” and are used almost interchangeably. Moins fort is a bit more explicit about lowering volume.

Is professeur always masculine? How do you refer to a female teacher?

Traditionally, professeur is a masculine noun grammatically:

un professeur – a (male or unspecified) teacher
le professeur – the teacher

For a female teacher, there are a few possibilities, and usage is evolving:

Le professeur with feminine agreement elsewhere
- Le professeur est arrivée. Elle est très compétente.
  (masculine article, but referring to a woman with feminine agreement)
La professeure (increasingly common, especially in Canada and some official French usage)
- La professeure de français est très stricte.
La prof – informal, shortened form
- La prof est sympa.

In your sentence, Le professeur could refer to a male or female teacher; the sentence itself doesn’t specify gender.

Why do we use Le in Le professeur? Can we omit the article like in English “Teacher asks the students…”?

In French, you almost always need an article in front of a singular, countable noun like professeur:

Le professeur – the teacher
Un professeur – a teacher

Unlike English, you cannot normally say just “Professeur demande…” without any article. That sounds incomplete or wrong.

So:

Le professeur demande… – The teacher asks…
Un professeur demande… – A teacher asks…

Using Le here suggests a specific teacher that both speaker and listener know (e.g., the teacher of that class).

How would the sentence change if all the students were female?

You would only change the adjective bavards to its feminine plural form bavardes:

Le professeur demande aux élèves bavardes de parler plus doucement.

Notes:

élève is a word that can refer to any gender; its article and adjectives show the gender.
Here les élèves stays the same in sound and writing; only bavards → bavardes changes.

How would the sentence look if we replaced aux élèves bavards with a pronoun?

The indirect object aux élèves bavards (to the talkative students) is replaced by leur (to them).

The sentence becomes:

Le professeur leur demande de parler plus doucement.

Word order:

Pronoun leur comes before the verb demande.
You cannot put leur after the infinitive here (✗ Le professeur demande de parler plus doucement leur is wrong).

Is demande here a noun (“a request”) or a verb (“asks”)? How can I tell?

In this sentence, demande is a verb form:

It’s the 3rd person singular, present tense of demander:
- il/elle demande – he/she asks

Clues:

It comes right after the subject Le professeur.
It is followed by the indirect object aux élèves bavards and then de parler…, which is exactly how verbs behave.

If demande were a noun (“a request”), it would usually appear with a determiner like une or la:

une demande – a request
la demande du professeur – the teacher’s request

But here the structure is:

Le professeur (subject) + demande (verb) + aux élèves… (objects/complements)
So it’s clearly the verb.