La plaie saigne.

A natural pronunciation is roughly:

lah pleh sen(y)

More precisely in IPA: /la plɛ sɛɲ/

A few notes:

• la = /la/
• plaie sounds like plèh → /plɛ/
• saigne sounds like sègne / seny → /sɛɲ/

The gn in saigne is like the ny sound in canyon.

Plaie is a feminine noun meaning wound, cut, or injury to the flesh.

It is more specific than a general injury:

• une plaie = a wound
• une blessure = an injury / wound more generally

So La plaie saigne literally means The wound is bleeding or The cut is bleeding.

In French, nouns usually need an article much more often than in English.

So French normally says:

• La plaie saigne.

Where English might sometimes say:

• Wounds bleed
• The wound is bleeding
• A wound is bleeding

Here, la means the, and it tells you we are talking about a specific wound.

Saying just Plaie saigne would be ungrammatical in normal French.

Because every French noun has a grammatical gender, and plaie happens to be feminine.

So it takes:

• la plaie
• une plaie

This gender is grammatical, not biological. A wound is not “female” in a real-world sense; it just belongs to the feminine noun class.

Saigne comes from the verb saigner, which means to bleed.

Examples:

• La plaie saigne. = The wound is bleeding.
• Je saigne. = I am bleeding.
• Il saigne du nez. = He has a nosebleed / He is bleeding from the nose.

Because saigne is the conjugated form, while saigner is the infinitive.

Here the subject is la plaie = it / the wound, which is third person singular, so the verb becomes:

• je saigne
• tu saignes
• il/elle/on saigne

So:

• La plaie saigne. = correct
• La plaie saigner. = incorrect

It is in the present tense: présent.

In French, the present tense can often translate several ways in English depending on context:

• The wound bleeds
• The wound is bleeding
• The wound does bleed

In this sentence, the most natural English translation is usually The wound is bleeding.

French usually does not need a separate verb like is plus -ing to express an action happening now.

English:

• The wound is bleeding

French:

• La plaie saigne

The simple present in French often covers what English expresses with both:

• simple present: bleeds
• present progressive: is bleeding

If needed, French can emphasize an ongoing action with expressions like être en train de, but that would sound less natural here:

• La plaie est en train de saigner = The wound is in the process of bleeding

That is grammatical, but La plaie saigne is simpler and more natural.

Yes, it is very similar here:

• La plaie = the subject
• saigne = the verb

So the structure is:

Subject + Verb

Just like:

• The wound bleeds
• The wound is bleeding

This makes the sentence quite straightforward for English speakers.

Yes.

In plaie:

• the ending -ie does not sound like English ee
• the whole word is pronounced /plɛ/

In saigne:

• the final e is silent
• gn makes the ny sound /ɲ/
• the whole word is /sɛɲ/

French spelling often preserves letters that are not pronounced individually.

Yes, often they do.

• la plaie = the wound
• les plaies = the wounds

In standard pronunciation:

• plaie = /plɛ/
• plaies = also usually /plɛ/

The difference is often heard from the article:

• la plaie
• les plaies

This is very common in French: singular and plural noun forms are often spelled differently but pronounced the same.

Yes. French gn is a special sound: /ɲ/.

It is not pronounced like:

• English g + n
• or just n

Instead, think of:

• Italian gn in lasagna
• Spanish ñ
• English ny in canyon

So saigne is not sayn and not sag-n. It is closer to sèny.

Yes, but it changes the meaning.

• La plaie saigne. = The wound is bleeding.
• Une plaie saigne. = A wound is bleeding.

So:

• la refers to a specific wound already known in the context
• une introduces a wound as one example or an unspecified wound

Both are grammatically correct, but they do not mean exactly the same thing.

Yes. It is simple, correct, and natural.

A French speaker would readily understand it as a normal statement describing a wound that is bleeding.

Depending on context, people might also say:

• La blessure saigne. = The injury is bleeding.
• Ça saigne. = It’s bleeding.
• La plaie continue de saigner. = The wound continues to bleed.

But La plaie saigne is perfectly normal French.