Learn Hardcore French: Le dimanche, Paul fait du sport au parc. - On Sundays, Paul plays sports in the park.

If you say just Dimanche, Paul fait du sport au parc, without le, it usually refers to one specific Sunday (often past or future, depending on context):

Dimanche, Paul fait du sport au parc.
→ On Sunday, Paul is doing sports at the park. (this coming Sunday, for example)

So le dimanche = every Sunday / on Sundays (in general).

What is the difference between Le dimanche and Les dimanches?

Both can refer to repeated Sundays, but there is a nuance:

Le dimanche = most natural, neutral way to express a habit:
→ On Sundays, Paul does sports…
Les dimanches = all Sundays as a group, often a bit more specific or emphatic, or used in contrast:
→ Les dimanches, Paul fait du sport au parc, et les samedis il reste chez lui.
(On Sundays, Paul does sports at the park, and on Saturdays he stays at home.)

For a simple habitual sentence, Le dimanche is the usual choice.

Why is dimanche not capitalized? In English we write Sunday with a capital letter.

In French, days of the week are not capitalized unless they start a sentence or are part of an official title. So you write:

lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche

This is just a spelling convention; it doesn’t change the meaning.

Why is the verb faire used in fait du sport and not something like jouer?

In French, you generally:

use faire with sport in a general sense:
→ faire du sport = to do sports / to exercise
use jouer à with specific games or team sports:
→ jouer au tennis, jouer au foot, jouer au basket

So you say:

Paul fait du sport au parc.
→ Paul does sports / works out at the park.

If you specify a particular sport, you might say:

Le dimanche, Paul joue au foot au parc.
→ On Sundays, Paul plays football (soccer) at the park.

But jouer au sport by itself is not idiomatic in French.

Why is it du sport and not de le sport or des sports?

Du is the contraction of de + le:

de + le sport → du sport

Here du is a partitive article, often translated with English “some”, or sometimes left untranslated:

faire du sport = literally to do some sport, but naturally to do sports / to exercise

We don’t normally say faire de le sport (that’s just grammatically wrong) or faire des sports unless we really want to emphasize multiple different sports, which is less common. The fixed, natural expression is:

faire du sport.

What exactly does faire du sport mean? Is it more like “to play a sport” or “to exercise”?

Faire du sport is quite broad. It can mean:

to play a sport / do sports
to work out / to exercise

It doesn’t specify which sport or what kind of physical activity. It just means doing some form of physical exercise.

Context can make it feel closer to “play a sport” or “exercise”, but by itself it’s neutral and general.

Could I also say Paul fait du sport au parc le dimanche? Is the word order flexible?

Yes, you can. Both are correct:

Le dimanche, Paul fait du sport au parc.
Paul fait du sport au parc le dimanche.

Putting Le dimanche at the beginning emphasizes the time frame (Sundays). Putting it at the end is more neutral. In French, time expressions often go at the beginning or end of the sentence.

What does au in au parc stand for?

Au is the contraction of à + le:

à + le parc → au parc

So au parc literally means “at the park / to the park”.

In this sentence, it’s best translated as “at the park”:

Paul fait du sport au parc.
→ Paul does sports at the park.

What is the difference between au parc and dans le parc?

Both are possible, but there’s a nuance:

au parc: general location, at the park. Very common and natural.
dans le parc: more literally inside the park, within its boundaries.

In everyday speech, au parc is usually what people say when talking about going to or being at a park. Dans le parc can be used when you want to emphasize the inside aspect, but here au parc is the most idiomatic.

Why is the verb in the present tense fait? In English we say “On Sundays, Paul does sports…”, but we might think of habits as something like “used to” or “will”.

The French present tense covers:

actions happening right now, and
habitual or regular actions

So:

Le dimanche, Paul fait du sport au parc.
→ On Sundays, Paul does sports at the park. (habitual)

That’s exactly parallel to English simple present for habits (Paul works on weekdays. Paul does sports on Sundays.). There is no special tense just for habits in French; the normal present tense is used.

Where does fait come from? It doesn’t look like the infinitive faire.

Faire is an irregular verb. In the present tense:

je fais
tu fais
il / elle / on fait
nous faisons
vous faites
ils / elles font

So with Paul (third person singular), you use il fait:

Paul fait du sport.
→ Paul does sports.

That’s why the form is fait, not faire or fais.

Is the comma after Le dimanche necessary?

It’s optional but recommended. When you start a sentence with a time expression, French often uses a comma, especially in writing:

Le dimanche, Paul fait du sport au parc. ✅
Le dimanche Paul fait du sport au parc. ✅ (also correct, just less clear visually)

The comma just makes the sentence easier to read by clearly separating the time phrase from the main clause.