Le fleuriste prépare un bouquet pour Marie.

Because fleuriste can refer to either a man or a woman, and the article tells you which one is meant here.

• le fleuriste = the male florist
• la fleuriste = the female florist

So in this sentence, the florist is understood to be male.

Le means the, while un means a or an.

So:

• le fleuriste = the florist
• un fleuriste = a florist

French uses definite and indefinite articles much like English does.

Because prépare is the conjugated verb, while préparer is the infinitive.

• préparer = to prepare
• il/elle prépare = he/she prepares

In a normal sentence with a subject, French usually needs a conjugated verb:

• Le fleuriste prépare... = The florist prepares...

The accent in prépare is part of the spelling of the verb préparer. It helps show pronunciation.

In this verb family:

• préparer
• prépare
• préparation

The é is pronounced differently from a plain e. French accents are important and usually cannot be left out in correct writing.

Bouquet is a masculine noun in French, so it takes the masculine singular indefinite article un.

• un bouquet = a bouquet
• le bouquet = the bouquet

If the noun were feminine, French would use une instead.

Yes, it is essentially the same word. English borrowed bouquet from French.

However, the pronunciation is French here, not English. In French, the final t is usually silent.

Pour means for, and here it shows who the bouquet is intended for.

• un bouquet pour Marie = a bouquet for Marie

This is the natural way to say that the bouquet is meant for Marie.

Because in French, Marie is not the direct object of prépare in this sentence. The direct object is un bouquet. Marie is the person the bouquet is for, so French normally uses pour:

• Le fleuriste prépare un bouquet pour Marie.

That is the standard structure.

Because Marie is a proper name. In French, proper names usually do not take an article.

So you normally say:

• pour Marie
• avec Marie
• Marie arrive

French does use articles with some place names and in a few special cases, but not usually with people’s first names.

Yes. The sentence follows a very common French pattern:

Subject + verb + direct object + prepositional phrase

So:

• Le fleuriste = subject
• prépare = verb
• un bouquet = direct object
• pour Marie = prepositional phrase

This is very similar to normal English word order.

You would normally say:

La fleuriste prépare un bouquet pour Marie.

Only the article changes here:

• le fleuriste = the male florist
• la fleuriste = the female florist

The noun fleuriste itself usually stays the same.

A rough guide is:

luh fluh-REEST prae-PAIR uh(n) boo-KAY poor ma-REE

A few useful notes:

• Le is short and light.
• fleuriste has a French eu sound, which does not exist exactly in English.
• prépare sounds roughly like pray-pair.
• bouquet ends in -kay.
• Marie in French sounds like ma-REE.