L’adresse postale n’est pas lisible sur l’enveloppe.

Because adresse starts with a vowel sound, French uses elision: la becomes l’.

• la adresse ❌
• l’adresse ✅

This happens with many words:

• l’école
• l’homme
• l’enveloppe

Postale means postal or mailing.

It is feminine because it describes adresse, and adresse is a feminine noun. In French, adjectives must agree with the noun they describe.

• masculine: postal
• feminine: postale

So:

• un code postal
• une adresse postale

French standard negation usually uses two parts:

• ne before the verb
• pas after the verb

Here the verb is est:

• est = is
• n’est pas = is not

The ne becomes n’ before a vowel sound, so:

• ne est pas ❌
• n’est pas ✅

The verb is être (to be), and here it appears as est.

So the structure is:

• L’adresse postale = the postal address
• n’est pas = is not
• lisible = readable / legible

This is a very common pattern in French: subject + être + adjective

For example:

• Le texte est clair.
• La porte est ouverte.

Because lisible is an adjective meaning readable or legible, and in the singular it looks the same for masculine and feminine.

So:

• un texte lisible
• une adresse lisible

Some adjectives change more obviously between masculine and feminine, but lisible does not change in pronunciation or spelling here.

It would become lisibles only in the plural:

• des adresses lisibles

It can mean either, depending on context.

In this sentence, legible is probably the most natural English idea, because it refers to writing on an envelope. So it suggests that the address cannot be clearly read.

But in French, lisible often covers both:

• readable
• legible
• easy to read

Because the address is written on the envelope, not inside it.

• sur = on
• dans = in / inside

So:

• sur l’enveloppe = on the envelope
• dans l’enveloppe = inside the envelope

For an address written on the outside, sur is the correct choice.

For the same reason as in l’adresse: enveloppe begins with a vowel sound, so la becomes l’.

• la enveloppe ❌
• l’enveloppe ✅

Since enveloppe is feminine, the full article would normally be la, but elision changes it to l’.

It follows a very common French pattern:

subject + ne + verb + pas + adjective + prepositional phrase

Here that gives:

• L’adresse postale = subject
• n’est pas = negative verb
• lisible = adjective
• sur l’enveloppe = prepositional phrase

So it is basically: The postal address is not legible on the envelope.

Yes, absolutely. That would still be natural.

Adding postale makes it more specific:

• l’adresse = the address
• l’adresse postale = the postal/mailing address

In many contexts, just l’adresse is enough, especially if it is obvious you mean the address written on the envelope.

Adresse is pronounced roughly like ah-DRESS in French, while adressé would be a different form. In adresse, the final -e is not strongly pronounced.

The accent in adresse is actually on the first letter: à? No — in this word there is usually no accent mark in standard spelling: adresse.

So if you saw L’adresse, the apostrophe is from l’, not an accent on the a of adresse itself.

The word is written:

• adresse

not:

• àdresse ❌
• adrésse ❌

Not really. It may feel a little passive in English because is not legible describes a state, but in French this is simply être + adjective.

A true passive would look more like:

• L’adresse n’est pas lue = The address is not being read / is not read

But here:

• L’adresse n’est pas lisible = The address is not readable / legible

So lisible is an adjective, not a past participle used in a passive construction.