Learn Hardcore French: Je garde toujours une copie du document.

A useful thing to remember: the French present tense often covers both English simple present and sometimes present progressive depending on context.

What does garder mean here exactly?

Here, garder means to keep, to retain, or to hold on to.

In other contexts, garder can also mean things like:

to watch/look after someone or something
to guard
to keep on or preserve

But in une copie du document, the natural meaning is clearly to keep a copy.

Why is toujours placed after garde?

In French, adverbs like toujours (always), souvent (often), and déjà (already) often come right after the conjugated verb in a simple tense.

So:

Je garde toujours... = natural
putting toujours somewhere else is sometimes possible, but this is the most standard word order

So the pattern here is:

Je
- garde
  - toujours
    - une copie du document

Why is it une copie and not la copie?

Une copie uses the indefinite article, so it means a copy.

That suggests the speaker is talking about a copy, not a specific copy already identified in the conversation.

Compare:

une copie = a copy
la copie = the copy

Also, in French, you usually cannot leave out the article before a singular countable noun the way English sometimes can. So copie normally needs une, la, etc.

What does du mean here?

Here, du means of the.

So:

une copie du document = a copy of the document

This is a very common French structure:

une photo du bâtiment = a photo of the building
la couverture du livre = the cover of the book

Be careful: du can also mean some in other sentences, but not here. In this sentence, it is the of the meaning.

Why is it du document instead of de le document?

Because in French, de + le contracts to du.

So:

de + le document → du document

This contraction is required.

Other related contractions:

de + les → des
de + la stays de la
de + l' stays de l'

So you say:

la copie du document not
la copie de le document

Is document masculine or feminine?

Document is masculine:

le document

That is why de + le becomes du in this sentence.

If the noun were feminine, you would get a different form:

une copie de la lettre = a copy of the letter

If it began with a vowel sound, you would usually have:

une copie de l'article

Can toujours also mean still, or does it only mean always?

Yes, toujours can sometimes mean still, depending on context.

For example:

Il est toujours là. = He is still there.

But in Je garde toujours une copie du document, the meaning is clearly always, because it describes a repeated habit.

So here:

toujours = always not
still

How is the sentence pronounced?

A careful pronunciation is approximately:

/ʒə ɡaʁd tu.ʒuʁ yn kɔ.pi dy dɔ.ky.mɑ̃/

A few pronunciation notes:

Je sounds like zhuh
garde has a hard g
toujours sounds roughly like too-zhoor
une has the French u sound, which does not exist in standard English
du also has that same French u sound
document ends with a nasal vowel, so the final -ent is not pronounced like English ent

A rough English-style approximation would be:

zhuh gard too-zhoor een coh-pee dew doh-kew-mahn

But the real French vowel sounds in une, du, and the end of document are different from English.