LESSON 2.1: SUJET (subject)

The subject is necessary in every sentence for it to make sense. The subject can be more than one thing, it can be a pronoun, a name or an object. But all these have one thing in common, they accomplish the action in the sentence. 

So if you are reading a sentence and you don't know what is the subject is you can ask yourself one question: who is/what is [verb used in the sentence]?

For example, the sentence is: Jeanne lit un livre [jeanne is reading a book]. Here the verb is «lit [read]» so the question we would ask yourself in this situation would be: who is reading a book? The answer is Jeanne so Jeanne is the subject of the sentence. 

It is important to spot the subject in each sentence because we'll learn later on that the gender of the subject will tune with the verb. I know the sentence looks weird because in French words are either feminine or masculine (gender) and they go with the verb. So if a feminine subject is linked with a verb, it's ending will be feminine (yes the ending are different if the word is feminine or masculine but don't fret it's not that hard). The subject is either feminine or masculine but it is also singular or plural. This one is pretty easy if there is only one person it's singular and if there are more than one, it's plural. The singular and plural distinction is the thing that is the most important to remember when we accord the verb. 

The subject is a category of words and all the words who have the requirements to be in the subject category will follow the general rules. A subject can be a word (Marion), two words (le garçon) [leh gar-sson/the boy] or more than two words (les deux filles et leur mère) [lehh doeuh fi-ye et leuh-rr maî-reh/the two daughters and their mother]. 

So basically when you read a French sentence you need to find the subject with the help of the question or not and then ask yourself, is the subject singular or plural and is it feminine or masculine. It is boring but it will help you better understand why some words go with «un» and others «une». 

Here are some examples I want you to try and guess what is the subject and is it plural/singular and feminine/masculine. The answers will be below.

1. Marie est assise sur une chaise.

2. Le pianiste joue du piano.

3. Jean et Luc sont allés au marché.

4. Le gazon est vert.

5. L'hôtel est à dix minute de la plage.

1. Marie: singular and feminine because Marie is doing the action alone and Marie is a girl so it's feminine.

2. Le pianiste: singular and masculine because there is only one pianiste [pianist] and masculine because in French words are always masculine at the starts until it's specified that it's feminine. Also «le» is a masculine pronoun.

3. Jean et Luc: plural and masculine because when there is more than one person it's plural and masculine because both name are boys name so it's masculine.

4. Le gazon: singular and masculine because gazon [ga-zon/grass] is a masculine word and even though there is a lot of grass gazon represents all the grass so it stays singular.

5. L'hôtel: masculine and singular because there is only one hotel and masculine because the word is a masculine word. 

The way to know if a word is masculine or feminine is quite difficult for people who didn't grew up speaking French, I'll make a lesson on how to differentiate masculine from feminine words.

Until then...