Ma tante retourne chez le libraire parce qu’elle veut offrir un roman à son fils.

In this sentence, retourne means goes back or returns.

• retourner can mean:
  • to return / go back to a place
  • sometimes to turn over in other contexts

Here, Ma tante retourne chez le libraire means your aunt is going back to the bookseller’s/shopkeeper’s place.

So a natural English sense is:

• My aunt is going back to the bookseller’s
• or My aunt returns to the bookseller’s

Chez is used when you mean to someone’s place, to a professional’s office/shop, or at someone’s home/place.

So:

• chez le libraire = to the bookseller’s / at the bookseller’s place
• à la librairie = to the bookshop

Both can make sense, but they focus on slightly different things:

• chez le libraire emphasizes the person/business
• à la librairie emphasizes the location/shop itself

French very often uses chez with professions:

• chez le médecin = at the doctor’s
• chez le coiffeur = at the hairdresser’s
• chez le boulanger = at the baker’s

No. This is a very important false friend.

• libraire = bookseller / someone who works in or runs a bookshop
• librairie = bookshop
• bibliothèque = library
• bibliothécaire = librarian

So in this sentence, le libraire is not a librarian. It is the person selling books.

Because French avoids having que directly before a vowel sound when possible. Que becomes qu’ before a vowel or silent h.

So:

• parce que
  • elle
• becomes parce qu’elle

This kind of contraction is very common in French:

• que il → qu’il
• que elle → qu’elle
• je aime → j’aime

It helps French sound smoother.

After vouloir (to want), French normally uses a bare infinitive directly.

So:

• elle veut offrir = she wants to give
• literally: she wants give

English uses to before the second verb, but French does not after vouloir.

Other common examples:

• Je veux manger. = I want to eat.
• Nous voulons partir. = We want to leave.

So veut offrir is the normal structure.

Because with offrir, the thing being given is the direct object, and the recipient is introduced by à.

Pattern:

• offrir quelque chose à quelqu’un
• to give something to someone

So here:

• un roman = the thing being given
• à son fils = to her son

Examples:

• J’offre des fleurs à ma mère. = I’m giving flowers to my mother.
• Il offre un cadeau à son ami. = He gives a gift to his friend.

Using pour son fils would change the meaning to for her son, not necessarily directly to him.

They are close, but not the same.

• à son fils = to her son
  This marks the recipient.
• pour son fils = for her son
  This means it is intended for him, but it does not directly express the act of giving to him.

With offrir, French normally uses à for the person receiving the gift:

• offrir un roman à son fils = to give a novel to her son

If you said pour son fils, it would sound more like:

• she is buying/choosing it for him

That can be possible in other sentences, but here à is the standard choice with offrir.

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

Here, the owner is female (ma tante), but the possessed noun is:

• fils = son = masculine singular noun

So French uses:

• son fils = her son

Compare:

• sa fille = her daughter
• son fils = her son

This can feel strange to English speakers because English his/her matches the owner, but French son/sa/ses matches the noun that follows.

Because tante is a feminine singular noun.

French possessive adjectives must agree with the noun:

• mon = my + masculine singular
• ma = my + feminine singular
• mes = my + plural

So:

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

A useful extra note: before a vowel sound, French often uses mon even before a feminine noun for ease of pronunciation:

• mon amie = my (female) friend

But tante begins with a consonant sound, so it stays ma tante.

Un roman means a novel, so it is indefinite: just one novel, not a specific one already identified.

• un roman = a novel
• le roman = the novel

French uses the indefinite article when introducing something non-specific for the first time.

So here, the idea is simply that she wants to give her son a novel, not necessarily one already known to both speaker and listener.

Sometimes, but not always.

Both can relate to coming/going back, but the point of view matters:

• retourner often means to go back / return
• revenir often means to come back

In this sentence:

• Ma tante retourne chez le libraire = My aunt is going back to the bookseller’s

That works well because the focus is on her movement back to that place.

If you used revient, it might sound more like she is coming back there from the speaker’s perspective, which is less natural here unless that viewpoint is important.

So retourne is the safer, more neutral choice in this sentence.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

ma tant ruh-toorn shey luh lee-brair parskel vuh of-reer uhn ro-man ah son fees

A few helpful points:

• tante: the an is a nasal vowel
• retourne: the r is the French guttural r
• chez sounds like shay
• libraire sounds roughly like lee-brair
• qu’elle blends smoothly into one unit
• offrir has a clear final r sound in careful speech
• fils is pronounced fees

Also, French rhythm tends to group words together smoothly:

• Ma tante retourne
• chez le libraire
• parce qu’elle veut offrir
• un roman à son fils

The sentence breaks down like this:

• Ma tante = subject
• retourne chez le libraire = main verb + place
• parce qu’ = because
• elle veut offrir un roman à son fils = reason clause

More specifically:

1. Ma tante retourne chez le libraire
   = My aunt is going back to the bookseller’s

2. parce qu’elle veut offrir un roman à son fils
   = because she wants to give a novel to her son

So the full structure is:

• main clause + parce que
  • subordinate clause

This is a very common way to express reasons in French.