Breakdown of Plus les bagages sont lourds, plus les passagers avancent lentement dans la gare.
Questions & Answers about Plus les bagages sont lourds, plus les passagers avancent lentement dans la gare.
Because this is a very common French pattern: plus..., plus...
It means the more..., the more... or sometimes the X-er..., the Y-er... in English.
So:
- Plus les bagages sont lourds = The heavier the luggage is
- plus les passagers avancent lentement = the more slowly the passengers move forward
French uses plus at the start of both parts to show a relationship between two changing things.
Because this is not the ordinary more than structure.
In standard comparison, you often get:
- plus... que... = more... than...
Example:
- Il est plus grand que moi = He is taller than me
But here, the sentence uses the special correlative pattern plus..., plus..., so que is not needed.
French often uses bagages as a plural noun where English prefers the uncountable noun luggage.
So:
- un bagage = one piece of luggage / one bag
- les bagages = luggage / the bags / baggage
This is one of those places where French and English organize the idea differently. Even if English uses a singular-looking mass noun, French may use a plural noun.
French uses the definite article much more often than English does.
Here, les can refer to:
- a whole group in general, or
- the specific luggage and passengers in the situation being discussed
A native English speaker might expect to drop the article, but French usually does not do that here. So les bagages and les passagers are perfectly normal.
Because their subjects are plural:
- les bagages → plural, so sont
- les passagers → plural, so avancent
French verbs must agree with their subject in number.
So:
- le bagage est lourd = singular
- les bagages sont lourds = plural
and
- le passager avance = singular
- les passagers avancent = plural
Because lourds is an adjective, and French adjectives usually agree with the noun they describe.
Here, bagages is:
- masculine
- plural
So the adjective must also be masculine plural:
- lourd = masculine singular
- lourds = masculine plural
That is why the sentence has les bagages sont lourds.
Because lentement is an adverb, and it modifies the verb avancent.
It tells us how the passengers move:
- avancent lentement = move slowly
But lents is an adjective. It would describe the passengers themselves, not the action:
- les passagers sont lents = the passengers are slow
So in this sentence, lentement is the correct form.
In a normal sentence, you certainly can say:
- Les passagers avancent plus lentement = The passengers move more slowly
But in this special plus..., plus... structure, the comparison is already introduced by the plus at the start of the second clause:
- plus les passagers avancent lentement
So the sentence does not need another plus before lentement.
Avancent comes from avancer.
Here it means something like:
- move forward
- make their way forward
- progress
In this sentence, it describes physical movement through the station, so move forward or move along is a good way to understand it.
Because dans la gare emphasizes being inside the station or moving within it.
- dans la gare = in / inside the station
- à la gare = at the station
Since the sentence describes passengers moving, dans la gare is a natural choice because it highlights movement through the interior space.
The comma separates the two matching parts of the plus..., plus... structure.
It makes the sentence easier to read:
- first part: Plus les bagages sont lourds
- second part: plus les passagers avancent lentement dans la gare
It is very normal to write this kind of sentence with a comma between the two halves.