Je vais accompagner ma tante au musée cet après-midi.

It is the near future in French, called le futur proche.

The pattern is:

present tense of aller + infinitive

So here:

• je vais = I am going
• accompagner = to accompany

Together, je vais accompagner means I am going to accompany. This structure is very common in everyday French.

Yes. That would also be correct.

French often uses the present tense to talk about a future action when the time is clear from context, especially if you already have a time phrase like cet après-midi.

The difference is mostly nuance:

• je vais accompagner = clearly I’m going to accompany
• j’accompagne = I’m accompanying / I will accompany, with the future understood from context

The version with vais makes the future feeling more explicit.

Because after vais in the futur proche, the second verb stays in the infinitive.

So:

• je vais
• tu vas
• il/elle va
• followed by an infinitive like accompagner, manger, partir, etc.

You do not conjugate both verbs.
So it is:

je vais accompagner

not je vais accompagne

Because accompagner takes a direct object in French.

You say:

• accompagner quelqu’un = to accompany someone

So ma tante comes directly after the verb.

This is useful because English speakers sometimes try to build the idea from go with, but in French the natural verb here is simply accompagner + person.

Because tante is a feminine singular noun, so the possessive adjective is ma.

French possessive adjectives agree with the thing possessed, not with the owner.

So:

• mon oncle = my uncle
• ma tante = my aunt

A useful extra point: before a feminine noun starting with a vowel sound, French often uses mon instead of ma for pronunciation reasons, as in mon amie. But tante starts with a consonant sound, so ma tante is normal.

Because à + le contracts to au in French.

So:

• à + le = au
• à + les = aux

Since musée is masculine singular (le musée), à le musée becomes au musée.

That contraction is required, not optional.

Because au musée expresses the destination: to the museum.

In this sentence, the idea is that the speaker will accompany their aunt to that place.

So:

• au musée = to the museum
• not in the museum

French uses à for many destinations, and with le musée it becomes au musée.

Because après-midi is treated as masculine here, and masculine singular nouns beginning with a vowel sound use cet instead of ce.

Compare:

• ce livre
• cet hôtel
• cet après-midi

So ce après-midi is not correct.

Yes. Après-midi can be masculine or feminine.

So you may see or hear:

• cet après-midi (masculine)
• cette après-midi (feminine)

Both exist, but cet après-midi is very common and sounds completely natural.

Because time expressions are flexible in French, and putting them at the end is very natural.

So this sentence is normal:

• Je vais accompagner ma tante au musée cet après-midi.

But you could also say:

• Cet après-midi, je vais accompagner ma tante au musée.

Both are correct.
The end position often sounds neutral and smooth in everyday speech.

A rough pronunciation is:

zhuh vay-z ah-kohn-pah-nyay ma tahnt oh myoo-zay set ah-preh-mee-dee

A few helpful points:

• je sounds like zhuh
• vais sounds like vay
• in careful speech, there is often a liaison in vais accompagner, so it can sound like vay-zah...
• tante ends with a nasal vowel, so the an is not like English ant
• musée sounds like myoo-zay
• cet après-midi often has a liaison too: set-ah...

The accents help with pronunciation and spelling:

• é in musée gives a clear ay sound
• è in après gives a more open vowel sound, closer to eh

The hyphen in après-midi is part of the standard spelling of this compound noun.

So these marks are not optional decoration—they are part of the correct written form.

Not exactly.

Accompagner means to accompany someone, often with the idea of going with them somewhere or being with them for that purpose.

English speakers may want to say go with, but in French accompagner quelqu’un is often the more natural choice in this kind of sentence.

So here, je vais accompagner ma tante is better than trying to translate word-for-word from English.