La station de métro est près de la pharmacie.

Because both station and pharmacie are feminine singular nouns in French.

• la station = the station
• la pharmacie = the pharmacy

In French, nouns have grammatical gender, so you have to learn each noun with its article. Since both are feminine, they use la.

In station de métro, de links two nouns.

It works a bit like English noun combinations such as:

• metro station
• train station
• bus stop

French often uses noun + de + noun where English often uses noun + noun. So:

• une station de métro = a metro station
• literally, something like a station of metro

Here, de does not mean possession. It just connects the two nouns.

Est means is. It is the third-person singular form of être = to be.

So the structure is:

• La station de métro = the metro station
• est = is
• près de la pharmacie = near the pharmacy

French usually needs an explicit verb, just like English does in this sentence.

Près de is a fixed expression meaning near.

It is best learned as a unit:

• près de = near

Examples:

• près de la pharmacie = near the pharmacy
• près de l’école = near the school
• près du parc = near the park

The de is part of the expression, so you normally do not separate the meaning of près from de here.

French usually uses an article before nouns much more often than English does.

So French says:

• près de la pharmacie = near the pharmacy

Even when English might sometimes say near pharmacy in certain styles, standard French normally wants the article:

• la pharmacie
• le parc
• l’école

So in this sentence, de la pharmacie is the normal form after près de.

Because the correct expression is près de.

French prepositions do not always match English ones word-for-word. Even though English simply says near the pharmacy, French uses:

• près de la pharmacie

So this is something to memorize as a complete pattern:

• être près de + place/person = to be near + place/person

Yes. When de is followed by le or les, it contracts.

After près de:

• près du parc = near the park
  (de + le = du)
• près des magasins = near the shops
  (de + les = des)

But there is no contraction with la:

• près de la pharmacie

And with a vowel sound:

• près de l’hôpital

So this sentence keeps de la because pharmacie is feminine singular.

Yes, the word order is very similar to English here.

French structure:

• La station de métro = subject
• est = verb
• près de la pharmacie = location phrase

So it follows a familiar pattern:

Subject + verb + location

That makes this sentence quite straightforward for an English speaker.

Yes. That is also correct.

• La station de métro est près de la pharmacie.
• La station est près de la pharmacie.

The first version is more specific: it tells you that the station is a metro station.

The second version is more general: it just says the station.

So the difference is mainly how much information you want to include.

Accents are part of standard French spelling and often affect pronunciation.

• métro has é
• près has è

Very roughly:

• é often sounds like the ay part of say
• è is a more open vowel, closer to the e in bet

So accents are not optional decoration; they help show the correct pronunciation and spelling.

A simple approximate pronunciation for an English speaker is:

la sta-syon duh may-tro ay preh duh la far-ma-see

A slightly more careful breakdown:

• La → la
• station → roughly sta-syon
• de métro → roughly duh may-tro
• est → usually sounds like ay
• près de → roughly preh duh
• la pharmacie → roughly la far-ma-see

A few useful notes:

• The t in est is usually silent here.
• station is pronounced with a syon sound at the end.
• pharmacie sounds like far-ma-see.

No. In French, many final consonants are silent.

In this sentence:

• est: the final t is silent
• près: the final s is silent
• métro: the final o is pronounced
• pharmacie: the final e is not pronounced as a separate sound

So one reason French spelling can feel tricky is that not every written final letter is spoken.

Pharmacie usually means the pharmacy/drugstore as a place or business.

So in this sentence:

• la pharmacie = the pharmacy

It does not mean the medicine itself. For medicine in general, French would use words such as médicament depending on the context.