Breakdown of Le patient attend dans la salle d'attente.
Questions & Answers about Le patient attend dans la salle d'attente.
Le patient uses the definite article le, which usually means the.
It suggests a specific patient that both speaker and listener can identify (for example, the patient we’re talking about in this context).
Un patient would mean a patient, more general or introducing a new, unspecified patient into the conversation. Both are grammatically correct; the choice depends on whether the patient is specific or not.
Yes, patient here is masculine, so it takes le: le patient.
For a female patient, you say la patiente (with final -e):
- Le patient attend… = The (male) patient is waiting…
- La patiente attend… = The (female) patient is waiting…
In the plural:
- Les patients = male patients or mixed group
- Les patientes = only female patients
No. Attendre is a false friend. It does not mean “to attend” in the English sense.
- attendre = to wait (or to wait for)
- to attend (a class, a meeting) = usually assister à in French
So Le patient attend… means The patient is waiting…, not The patient attends….
Attend is the third-person singular present tense of attendre (to wait):
- j’attends – I wait / I am waiting
- tu attends – you wait (singular, informal)
- il/elle/on attend – he/she/one waits
- nous attendons – we wait
- vous attendez – you wait (plural or formal)
- ils/elles attendent – they wait
So le patient = il, and therefore il attend.
In French, attendre already includes the idea of “waiting for”. You do not add pour before the thing or person you are waiting for:
- J’attends le médecin. = I am waiting for the doctor. (not j’attends pour le médecin)
- Il attend le bus. = He is waiting for the bus.
In the sentence Le patient attend dans la salle d’attente, the verb is just “waits” and the rest tells us where he waits, not what he waits for.
Dans usually means “in, inside” something.
À is more general (often translated as “at” or “to”) and is not used when you want to insist on being physically inside an enclosed space.
- dans la salle d’attente = in the waiting room (inside the room)
Saying à la salle d’attente is not idiomatic here; French uses dans for this type of location.
Salle d’attente is a compound noun:
- salle = room
- attente = waiting (the noun, from the verb attendre)
So literally, salle d’attente = “room of waiting”, i.e. waiting room.
The d’ is the preposition de (“of”), changed to d’ because the next word (attente) starts with a vowel.
French often contracts de to d’ in front of a vowel or a silent h to make pronunciation smoother:
- de + attente → d’attente
- de + école → d’école
The meaning is the same; it’s purely a pronunciation/spelling rule. So salle d’attente literally means salle de attente, but in correct French you must write d’attente.
In French, common nouns almost always need an article (definite, indefinite, or partitive). So you say:
- la salle d’attente = the waiting room
- une salle d’attente = a waiting room
Leaving out the article (∗salle d’attente) is generally incorrect in a normal sentence. Articles are used much more consistently in French than in English.
Yes. You can front the location to emphasize it or to vary the style:
- Le patient attend dans la salle d’attente.
- Dans la salle d’attente, le patient attend.
Both are correct. The meaning stays the same; the second version puts a little more emphasis on where this is happening.
Attend is pronounced roughly like “ah-tahn” in English approximations:
- a = “ah”
- tt = “t”
- en = nasal sound (like “ahn”)
- final d = silent
So you hear only one t sound and no d at the end.
Often, yes, especially in careful or formal speech.
Normally, the final t in patient is silent. But before a vowel (the a in attend), you can make a liaison, pronouncing a t that links the two words:
- Without liaison: [pa-syɑ̃ a-tɑ̃] (no extra t sound)
- With liaison: [pa-syɑ̃-t‿a-tɑ̃] (you hear a t between patient and attend)
The liaison here is optional but sounds natural and “smooth.”
To talk about more than one patient:
- Les patients attendent dans la salle d’attente.
Changes:
- Le patient → Les patients (add s)
- attend → attendent (add -ent, which is silent in pronunciation)
Spoken aloud, attend and attendent sound the same.