Learn Hardcore French: Le soir, le bateau retourne au port, et nous marchons lentement dans l'herbe. - In the evening, the boat returns to the harbor, and we walk slowly in the grass.

In French, parts of the day used as time expressions normally take the definite article le without a preposition when you mean “in the [part of the day]” in a general or habitual way.

le matin = in the morning
l’après‑midi = in the afternoon
le soir = in the evening
la nuit = at night

So Le soir, le bateau retourne au port literally looks like “The evening, the boat returns to the port”, but it’s understood as “In the evening, the boat returns to the port.”

You don’t say au soir in this meaning. Au soir is very rare and sounds literary/old‑fashioned; the natural everyday form is le soir.

What is the difference between soir and soirée?

Both relate to “evening,” but they’re used differently:

le soir: the time of day, neutral and factual
- Le soir, je lis. = In the evening, I read.
la soirée: the duration of the evening / the whole evening period, often with a sense of activity or event
- Nous avons parlé toute la soirée. = We talked all evening.
- Une soirée can also mean “a party/social evening.”

In your sentence, we’re just situating the action in time, so Le soir is the natural choice.
If you said Dans la soirée, le bateau retourne au port, it would sound more like “Later in the evening” or “At some point during the evening,” with a slightly different nuance.

Why is it le bateau and not un bateau?

Le bateau (the boat) suggests a specific, identifiable boat that the speaker and listener both know about—probably the same boat every evening.

Le bateau retourne au port.
→ The boat (that we have in mind, maybe the ferry, the fishing boat, etc.) goes back to the port.

If you said Un bateau retourne au port, it would sound like you are introducing a boat that hasn’t been mentioned before or that is not specific: “A boat goes back to the port.” That’s a different meaning.

So le bateau here implies “the usual / that specific boat.”

Why is the verb in the present tense (retourne, marchons) if we say “in the evening” in English we might expect “will return”, “walk”?

French present tense (le présent) is more flexible than English; it often covers what English uses present simple, present progressive, or even future for:

Habitual actions:
- Le soir, le bateau retourne au port.
  = Every evening, the boat goes back to the port.
Scheduled/near future (context‑dependent):
- Demain, le bateau retourne au port.
  = Tomorrow, the boat is going back / will go back to the port.

In your sentence, Le soir, le bateau retourne au port is best understood as a regular, repeated action, like English “In the evenings, the boat returns to the port.” The present tense is the natural default for that in French.

Why is it retourne and not revient or rentre?

All three verbs can relate to “coming/going back,” but they’re not interchangeable:

retourner (au port) = to go back / return (to a place)
- Focus on going back again to a place.
revenir (au port) = to come back (to the port, seen from the point of view of someone at the port)
- Focus on coming back toward the speaker’s location.
rentrer (au port / à la maison) = to go back home / back “inside” or to a base
- Often used with “home” or “base” places, or returning inside somewhere.

In Le soir, le bateau retourne au port, retourne emphasizes that the boat goes back to the port (its usual place) each evening.
You could say Le soir, le bateau revient au port, especially if the speaker is at the port, but retourner au port is very natural and neutral.

What exactly is happening in au port? Why not à le port?

Au is the contracted form of à + le:

à + le port → au port
à + le restaurant → au restaurant

French always contracts à + le to au, and de + le to du.

So:

retourner à le port is grammatically incorrect.
It must be retourner au port.

For feminine nouns, there is no contraction:

à + la gare → à la gare
à + l’école → à l’école (here we use l’ because of the vowel, not because of a contraction with à).

Why is there a comma after Le soir and can we change the word order?

Le soir at the start of the sentence is a time expression placed in front for emphasis or style. In French, it’s very common to put time expressions first:

Le soir, le bateau retourne au port.
Le matin, je bois un café.

The comma is standard and helps mark that Le soir is a separate time phrase, not the subject.

You can also say:

Le bateau retourne au port le soir, et nous marchons lentement dans l’herbe.

Both word orders are correct; starting with Le soir just highlights the time more strongly.

Why do we need the subject pronoun nous? Can we drop it like in Spanish or Italian?

In standard French, subject pronouns cannot normally be omitted. French verbs don’t carry enough information by themselves to identify the subject clearly in speech, so you must include the pronoun:

Nous marchons lentement. = We walk slowly.
❌ Marchons lentement. (This sounds like an order: “Let’s walk slowly.”)

Compare:

Spanish: Caminamos lentamente. (subject can be dropped)
French: Nous marchons lentement. (subject must be stated)

The only time you drop the subject pronoun in writing is in very stylized, poetic, or telegram‑style language, not in normal usage.

Why is the adverb lentement after the verb (marchons lentement) and not before it?

For simple verbs (a single verb form), many adverbs of manner in French usually come after the verb:

marcher lentement = to walk slowly
parler doucement = to speak softly
travailler sérieusement = to work seriously

So nous marchons lentement is the natural word order.

You could put some adverbs before the verb (like toujours, souvent, déjà, bien, mal), but lentement is not one of the common ones that go before a simple verb. Lentement nous marchons is possible in a poetic or highly literary style, but not in neutral everyday speech.

Why is it dans l’herbe and not sur l’herbe?

Both can be used, but they don’t feel quite the same:

marcher dans l’herbe
= to walk in the grass (your feet are in the grass, moving through it; you’re inside a grassy area)
marcher sur l’herbe
= to walk on the grass (emphasises the surface, often used in signs: Ne marchez pas sur l’herbe = “Keep off the grass.”)

In normal description, marcher dans l’herbe is very common because we imagine ourselves going through the grass. Sur l’herbe is also correct, just a slightly different nuance.

What is happening with l’herbe? Why the apostrophe and is herbe feminine?

Yes, herbe is feminine: une herbe, l’herbe.

The apostrophe is due to elision: French drops le or la before a vowel sound and replaces it with l’:

le arbre → ❌ (wrong) → l’arbre (the tree)
la herbe → ❌ (wrong) → l’herbe (the grass)
l’herbe is actually la herbe compressed.

A few points about herbe:

l’herbe (singular) usually means grass in general, like a mass noun: “the grass.”
les herbes (plural) usually means “herbs” (culinary, medicinal): les herbes de Provence.

How is marchons formed and pronounced? Why not marcheons?

Marcher is a regular ‑er verb. The nous form is:

nous marchons = stem march‑
- ending ‑ons

We don’t add an extra e before ‑ons for marcher because the stem already ends in ch, which keeps the hard “k” sound: mar‑shon (with nasal on at the end).

Pronunciation tips:

marchons is pronounced roughly mar‑shon (the ch like English “sh”, and the ons is one nasal sound [ɔ̃], not two separate sounds “on + s”).
The final ‑s in marchons is silent in isolation: [marʃɔ̃].
In nous marchons lentement, there is no liaison between marchons and lentement; you don’t pronounce an extra “z” sound.

Could we say Le soir, nous marchons lentement dans l’herbe without mentioning the boat? Does Le soir still sound natural?

Yes. Le soir works perfectly well as a general time expression even if it’s not linked to another event:

Le soir, nous marchons lentement dans l’herbe.
= In the evenings, we walk slowly in the grass.

The presence or absence of le bateau retourne au port doesn’t affect the grammar of Le soir. It just changes what you’re describing as your evening habit.