Breakdown of Le vendredi soir, nous allons souvent au stade pour voir nos amis jouer.
Questions & Answers about Le vendredi soir, nous allons souvent au stade pour voir nos amis jouer.
In French, using le before a day of the week expresses a habitual action (something you do regularly).
- Le vendredi soir, nous allons…
→ On Friday evenings, we (usually) go… (every/most Fridays)
If you said just Vendredi soir, nous allons…, it would sound more like:
- This Friday evening, we are going… (a specific upcoming Friday)
So le vendredi soir = on Fridays in the evening / on Friday evenings (general habit).
French normally uses the singular day name with le to express a repeated habit:
- Le vendredi soir = on Friday evenings (in general)
- You can say les vendredis soirs, but it sounds heavier and is much less common in everyday speech.
So the natural, idiomatic way to say on Fridays in the evening is le vendredi soir, not the plural form.
French nous allons (present tense of aller) can correspond to both:
- We go (habitual)
- We are going (right now / this Friday)
Context decides the best English translation.
Here, with le vendredi soir (a habitual marker), it means:
- Le vendredi soir, nous allons… → On Friday evenings, we go…
In French, the simple present is used for both habitual and “progressive” meanings; there is no separate -ing tense form like English.
In French, most short adverbs (like souvent, toujours, déjà) usually go:
- after the conjugated verb
- and before the rest of the sentence.
So:
- Nous allons souvent au stade.
(verb allons- adverb souvent
- rest: au stade)
- adverb souvent
Other possibilities exist for emphasis, but they sound less neutral:
- Souvent, nous allons au stade. (More like: Often, we go to the stadium. – fronted for emphasis)
The default, most natural position is exactly as in the sentence: nous allons souvent au stade.
In French, à + le contracts to au:
- à + le = au
- à + les = aux
So:
- à le stade → incorrect, because it must contract
- au stade → correct
It literally means to the stadium.
No, you normally need an article with singular countable nouns in French.
- English: to stadium → incorrect, we must say to *the stadium*
- French: à stade is likewise incorrect; you need au stade.
Only in a few special expressions do you omit the article (e.g. à l’école, en classe), but stade is not one of them here.
Pour + infinitive often expresses purpose: in order to / to (with the idea of intention).
- Nous allons au stade pour voir…
→ We go to the stadium to see… / in order to see…
If you said Nous allons au stade voir nos amis jouer, it’s understandable, but pour voir clearly marks the goal of going there.
In this sentence, pour is the most natural and explicit way to express purpose.
After a preposition like pour, French uses the infinitive:
- pour voir = to see
- pour manger = to eat
- pour parler = to speak
You cannot conjugate the verb after pour:
- ❌ pour nous voyons
- ✅ pour voir
So voir stays in the infinitive because it follows pour.
Here, jouer depends on voir:
- voir quelqu’un faire quelque chose
→ to see someone do something
In French, after perception verbs like voir, entendre, regarder, when followed by another verb, that second verb is usually an infinitive without a preposition:
- Je vois les enfants jouer. → I see the children playing.
- J’entends mon voisin chanter. → I hear my neighbor sing / singing.
So:
voir nos amis jouer = see our friends play / playing
No à or de is used here.
Nos is the first-person plural possessive adjective: our.
- nos amis = our friends
Other options mean different things:
- les amis = the friends (specific group already known from context; not marked as belonging to “us”)
- des amis = some friends (indefinite, not necessarily ours)
In English we say see our friends, so French naturally uses nos amis here.
French agrees the possessive with the number and gender of the noun possessed, not with the owner.
- ami is masculine singular → notre ami (our friend)
- amis is plural (masc. or mixed) → nos amis (our friends)
- amies is plural feminine → also nos amies
So plural amis requires plural nos.
Yes:
- Le vendredi soir, on va souvent au stade pour voir nos amis jouer.
Meaning is basically the same: On Friday evenings, we often go…
Difference:
- nous allons is more formal / standard, especially in writing.
- on va is very common in spoken French; on often stands in for “we”.
Learners should recognize both, but nous allons is the textbook form.
Yes, but the meaning or emphasis shifts slightly:
- Nous allons souvent au stade… (neutral, most common)
- Souvent, nous allons au stade… (emphasis on often; stylistic)
- Nous allons au stade souvent… (possible, but less natural in this simple sentence; more used when modifying a larger phrase or for a particular rhythm).
For learners, the safest and most idiomatic is the original:
Nous allons souvent au stade…
You could say:
- Le vendredi soir, nous allons souvent au stade pour regarder nos amis jouer.
Differences:
- voir = to see (more neutral; can be just the fact of seeing them there)
- regarder = to watch (focus on actively watching the action)
Both are grammatically correct; voir is slightly more natural if the focus is simply that you go there to see them and be there while they play.
In jouer, the infinitive ending is -er, not -ent.
- jouer is pronounced approximately /ʒwe/ (like “zhoo-eh”, blended: “zhweh”).
- The -er at the end of infinitives is pronounced like -é (as in parler, manger, regarder).
If it were a -ent ending on a conjugated verb in the 3rd person plural (like ils jouent), then that -ent would usually be silent. Here, you just have jouer, the infinitive.