Breakdown of Le métro est bloqué à cause d'un accident.
Questions & Answers about Le métro est bloqué à cause d'un accident.
In French, you almost always need an article (like le, la, les, un, une) in front of nouns.
- Le métro literally means the subway / the metro.
- Here, le is a definite article (like the in English).
French usually doesn’t drop the article the way English sometimes does (e.g. “Subway closed” on a sign). In French, a normal sentence would say Le métro est bloqué, not just Métro est bloqué.
The accent on é (an acute accent) changes both the pronunciation and sometimes the meaning.
- é is pronounced like the ay in say.
- So métro sounds roughly like MAY-tro, not MEH-tro.
Without the accent (metro), it would be misspelled in standard French. The official spelling is métro, short for métropolitain.
The form bloqué / bloquée agrees in gender and number with the noun:
- métro is masculine singular → le métro est bloqué
- If it were feminine singular, you’d write bloquée:
- La route est bloquée. (the road is blocked)
So:
- Masculine singular: bloqué
- Feminine singular: bloquée
- Masculine plural: bloqués
- Feminine plural: bloquées
In practice it works like an adjective describing the state of the metro: the metro is blocked.
Grammatically:
- est = present of être (to be)
- bloqué = past participle used as an adjective
You can see it’s behaving like an adjective because it agrees with the noun (bloqué / bloquée / bloqués / bloquées).
So the structure is similar to English is blocked, but French tends to treat this more like is in a blocked state.
All three can appear with transport, but they don’t mean exactly the same:
est bloqué
The metro cannot move because something is blocking or interrupting it (accident, congestion, obstruction, strike, etc.). Emphasis on being unable to move.est en panne
The metro is broken down / out of order. Emphasis on a technical failure.est arrêté
The metro is stopped. This can be neutral (just stopped at a station, at a red signal) or due to a problem. It doesn’t automatically imply a disruption.
In the sentence with à cause d’un accident, est bloqué fits well: an accident is blocking traffic.
Both express cause, but they work differently and have different structures:
à cause de + noun
- à cause d’un accident = because of an accident / due to an accident
- Structure: preposition + noun
- Often used for negative reasons or problems.
parce que + clause
- parce qu’il y a un accident = because there is an accident
- Structure: conjunction + full sentence
So you could say:
- Le métro est bloqué à cause d’un accident.
- Le métro est bloqué parce qu’il y a un accident.
Both are correct; the original just chooses the à cause de + noun structure.
de becomes d’ in front of a word starting with a vowel sound. This is to make pronunciation smoother.
- de + un accident → d’un accident
So:
- à cause de la pluie (consonant sound → keep de)
- à cause d’un accident (vowel sound → d’)
It’s the same rule as in:
- de + elle → d’elle
- de + avoir → d’avoir
Because accident is grammatically masculine in French.
- Masculine: un accident
- Feminine: une
- feminine noun (e.g. une voiture, une route)
Unfortunately, noun gender is mostly arbitrary in French. You usually have to learn each noun with its article:
- un accident
- une collision
- un problème
- une panne
You could say it, and people would understand, but it’s less natural here.
par is used more for the agent in a passive sentence:
- Le livre est écrit par Paul. (written by Paul)
- Il a été renversé par une voiture. (knocked over by a car)
à cause de is used for a cause / reason:
- Le métro est bloqué à cause d’un accident.
So par un accident sounds a bit odd because an accident is not really an agent; it’s more a cause, which is why à cause d’un accident is preferred.
Yes. French allows you to move à cause d’un accident without changing the meaning:
- Le métro est bloqué à cause d’un accident.
- À cause d’un accident, le métro est bloqué.
Both are correct and natural. Putting the cause first simply emphasizes the accident a bit more.