Word
La douleur est moins forte aujourd'hui.
Meaning
The pain is less severe today.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of La douleur est moins forte aujourd'hui.
être
to be
aujourd'hui
today
moins
less
la douleur
the pain
Questions & Answers about La douleur est moins forte aujourd'hui.
Why is it la douleur and not just douleur?
In French, singular countable nouns usually need an article, even when English would sometimes leave it out. So la douleur is the normal way to say the pain.
Also, douleur is a feminine noun, which is why the article is la.
- la douleur = the pain
- une douleur = a pain
In this sentence, la douleur refers to a specific pain already understood from the context.
Why is douleur feminine?
Because nouns in French have grammatical gender, and douleur happens to be feminine. This is something you usually have to learn together with the noun.
You can tell it is feminine here because both the article and the adjective agree with it:
- la douleur
- moins forte
If it were masculine, you would expect forms like le and fort instead.
Why do we use est here?