Breakdown of L’infirmière surveille la salle d’attente tout en répondant au téléphone.
Questions & Answers about L’infirmière surveille la salle d’attente tout en répondant au téléphone.
French avoids having two vowel sounds right next to each other at word boundaries.
- La ends in a vowel sound [a].
- Infirmière begins with a vowel sound [ɛ̃].
To make pronunciation smoother, la becomes l’ before a word starting with a vowel or silent h. This is called elision.
So:
- la infirmière → l’infirmière
The same happens with le:
- le homme → l’homme
Nouns referring to people in French usually have a masculine and a feminine form.
- un infirmier = a (male) nurse
- une infirmière = a (female) nurse
In your sentence, l’infirmière is feminine, so we know (from the grammar and spelling) that the nurse is a woman.
Key points:
- Masculine: infirmier
- Feminine: infirmière (adds -e and changes -er → -ère in spelling and pronunciation)
French does not need a special continuous form (like English “is watching”) to express an ongoing action.
The simple present often covers both:
- L’infirmière surveille la salle d’attente.
→ can mean “The nurse watches the waiting room”
or “The nurse is watching the waiting room (right now).”
You can use être en train de + infinitive if you really want to insist that the action is happening right at this moment:
- L’infirmière est en train de surveiller la salle d’attente.
→ “The nurse is (in the middle of) watching the waiting room.”
But in most contexts, surveille alone is natural and enough.
No, surveiller is more specific than just regarder.
- regarder = to look at, to watch (neutral)
- surveiller = to keep an eye on, to monitor, to watch over (with a sense of responsibility or control)
In this sentence, surveiller la salle d’attente suggests the nurse is:
- making sure everything is okay,
- paying attention to what happens,
- checking that patients are fine and behaving.
So surveiller implies active, responsible watching, not just glancing at something.
The infinitive is surveiller (a regular -er verb).
To get surveille, we conjugate surveiller in the present tense, 3rd person singular:
- je surveille
- tu surveilles
- il / elle / on surveille
- nous surveillons
- vous surveillez
- ils / elles surveillent
So in the sentence:
- L’infirmière surveille…
→ elle surveille (she watches / is watching)
Literally, la salle d’attente means “the room of waiting”, i.e. the waiting room.
- salle = room, hall (feminine noun)
- attente = waiting (the noun, not the verb)
We might expect de l’attente (“of the waiting”), but in many fixed expressions that are “noun + de + noun” compounds, French often drops the article after de:
- une salle de classe = a classroom
- une salle de bain = a bathroom
- une salle d’attente = a waiting room
Because attente starts with a vowel, de becomes d’ through elision:
- de attente → d’attente
So:
- la salle d’attente = “the waiting room”
Using la (the) rather than une (a) tells us we’re talking about a specific, known waiting room:
- la salle d’attente
→ the waiting room (the one in this clinic / office, known to speaker and listener) - une salle d’attente
→ a waiting room (any waiting room, not specified)
French often uses the definite article where English might use “the” or sometimes even omit the article; here it matches the usual English “the” quite closely.
Tout en + gerund (en + present participle) expresses that two actions happen at the same time, often with a nuance like “while also” or even slight contrast (“even while”).
- en répondant = while responding / while answering
- tout en répondant = while at the same time responding / all the while responding
In context:
- L’infirmière surveille la salle d’attente tout en répondant au téléphone.
→ She keeps an eye on the waiting room while (also) answering the phone.
You could say just en répondant au téléphone, but tout en highlights the simultaneity a bit more: she’s managing both tasks at once.
Répondant is the present participle of the verb répondre.
Formation:
- Take the nous form of the present:
- nous répondons
- Remove -ons:
- répond-
- Add -ant:
- répondant
When used with en, this present participle becomes a gerund (a verbal noun/adverbial form):
- en répondant = while responding / by responding
So in tout en répondant au téléphone, répondant is:
- not a tense,
- not the main verb of the sentence,
- but a non‑finite form indicating a secondary action happening at the same time as the main verb (surveille).
Note: The present participle in French is invariable (it doesn’t change form for gender or number).
Because the verb répondre takes the preposition à in French:
- répondre à quelque chose / à quelqu’un
= to answer something / someone
Téléphone is masculine singular.
So:
- à + le téléphone → au téléphone
Therefore:
- répondre au téléphone = to answer the phone
You cannot say répondre le téléphone in French. That sounds wrong to native speakers.
Yes, that word order is perfectly correct and very natural:
- Tout en répondant au téléphone, l’infirmière surveille la salle d’attente.
Both versions are fine:
- L’infirmière surveille la salle d’attente tout en répondant au téléphone.
- Tout en répondant au téléphone, l’infirmière surveille la salle d’attente.
Putting tout en répondant… at the beginning slightly emphasizes the simultaneous phone‑answering as the background situation.
In French, verbs do NOT change for gender, only for person and number.
- 3rd person singular present of surveiller is surveille
→ the same for il surveille and elle surveille
What does change for gender and number are:
- adjectives (e.g. petit / petite, fatigué / fatiguée)
- past participles in some cases (e.g. elles sont arrivées)
So:
- L’infirmière surveille… (she watches)
- L’infirmier surveille… (he watches)
The verb form surveille is identical in both cases.