Breakdown of Ce laboratoire est près d’un grand stade où les étudiants jouent au football.
Questions & Answers about Ce laboratoire est près d’un grand stade où les étudiants jouent au football.
In French, the demonstrative adjective must agree with the gender and number of the noun:
- ce for masculine singular nouns starting with a consonant: ce laboratoire
- cet for masculine singular nouns starting with a vowel or mute h: cet arbre, cet homme
- cette for feminine singular nouns: cette maison
- ces for all plural nouns: ces laboratoires, ces maisons
Laboratoire is masculine and starts with a consonant sound (l), so you must use ce:
> ce laboratoire = this/that laboratory
Près on its own is an adverb meaning near/close but in practice, when you say “near something,” French almost always uses the preposition près de:
- près de
- noun = near / close to something
- près de la gare – near the station
- près du parc – near the park
- près d’un stade – near a stadium
- noun = near / close to something
So you say:
- Ce laboratoire est près d’un grand stade.
literally: This laboratory is near of a big stadium.
English doesn’t use of, but French requires de, which contracts with the article (de + un → d’un). You cannot say près un stade; it must be près de / d’ + noun.
French often contracts de with the following article:
- de + le → du
- de + la → de la (no change)
- de + l’ → de l’ (no change in writing)
- de + les → des
- de + un → d’un
- de + une → d’une
Since près de is followed by un grand stade, the e of de is dropped and you add an apostrophe:
- près de + un grand stade → près d’un grand stade
This is purely a regular contraction and is required in writing.
Most French adjectives do come after the noun, but a common group of short, frequent adjectives usually comes before. A common mnemonic is BANGS (Beauty, Age, Number, Goodness, Size):
- Beauty: beau, joli
- Age: vieux, jeune, nouveau
- Number: deux, plusieurs
- Goodness: bon, mauvais
- Size: grand, petit, gros, long, etc.
Grand is an adjective of size, so it is normally placed before the noun:
- un grand stade – a big stadium
- une grande maison – a big house
If you put some adjectives after the noun, they can take on a more literal or different meaning, but for un grand stade, the normal, natural word order is adjective before the noun.
Here, où is a relative pronoun meaning where or in which. It introduces a clause that describes un grand stade:
- … un grand stade où les étudiants jouent au football.
= … a big stadium where the students play football.
Structurally:
- où replaces dans ce stade (in that stadium)
- les étudiants jouent au football is the clause it introduces
So you can think of it as:
- un grand stade (dans lequel) les étudiants jouent au football
→ simplified in normal French to un grand stade où…
Both are possible, but they do not mean exactly the same thing:
les étudiants jouent au football
→ the students play football (students in general / the students we have in mind)des étudiants jouent au football
→ some students are playing football (an unspecified number of students)
In the given sentence, les étudiants sounds like it’s talking about the students associated with that stadium (for example, the students of a nearby university or school), rather than just “some random students.” It suggests a more general or habitual idea: this is a stadium where the students (of that place) play football.
In French:
- jouer à + sport / game
- jouer de + musical instrument
Examples:
- jouer au tennis, jouer au football, jouer aux cartes
- jouer du piano, jouer de la guitare, jouer du violon
So with football (a sport), you must use à, which contracts with le:
- à + le football → au football
→ jouent au football = play football / play soccer
You should not say jouent du football for the sport.
You can say où les étudiants jouent, and it is grammatically correct, but it’s less specific. It simply means:
- where the students play (something, not specified)
Adding au football tells you what they play:
- où les étudiants jouent au football
→ where the students play football
In everyday language, French speakers usually include what is being played, unless it’s already very clear from context.
Yes, both are possible:
- Ce laboratoire est près d’un grand stade.
- Ce laboratoire se trouve près d’un grand stade.
Est is just the verb être (to be).
Se trouve literally means is located / is found and often sounds a bit more formal or descriptive, like saying is situated.
Both work here and have nearly the same meaning; est is simpler and more common in everyday speech.
- près is pronounced approximately [prɛ] (like “preh”).
The grave accent (è) indicates an open “eh” sound.
There is no word pres in correct modern French; the accent is part of the spelling.
Don’t confuse près with:
- presque (no accent) = almost
- Il est presque midi. – It is almost noon.
In your sentence, it must be près de (near), not presque.
So: près d’un grand stade = near a big stadium.
In this sentence, laboratoire is masculine:
- ce laboratoire (masculine demonstrative adjective)
- You would say un laboratoire, le laboratoire
Unfortunately, you often can’t tell the gender just by looking; you usually need to learn noun + article together:
- un laboratoire (m)
- une bibliothèque (f)
That said, many nouns ending in -oire are masculine (e.g., le laboratoire, le répertoire, le territoire), but there are exceptions, so it’s still something to memorize individually.
Jouent is the present tense of jouer (to play), conjugated for ils/elles:
- je joue
- tu joues
- il/elle/on joue
- ils/elles jouent
In the sentence:
- Subject: les étudiants (the students)
- Verb: jouent
So jouent is third person plural present, agreeing with les étudiants. It expresses a habitual or general action: the students play football (there), not necessarily at this exact moment.