Le pluriel qu'on entend et celui qu'on n'entend pas

Unité GR-23 · campagne 4 · -ent muet, irréguliers sonores, -issent.

The verb pillar opens with the split that makes French conjugation feel unfair: some third-person plurals are pure spelling, others are loud and mandatory in speech too.

The silent plural. For -er verbs, the written -ent is completely mute: il parle and ils parlent are identical to the ear. The plural lives only on the page — which is exactly why immersed learners, trained by sound, drop it in writing. If you learned French through your ears, -ent is a spelling decision, made by checking the subject, never by listening.

The audible plurals — two families:

1. Frequent irregulars change form outright: il fait / ils font, il va / ils vont, and the prendre / venir type where a consonant surfaces — elle prend /pʁɑ̃/ vs elles prennent /pʁɛn/.
2. Second-group verbs insert -iss-: il finit / ils finissent, elle choisit / elles choisissent — unmissable in speech, and ils finent does not exist.

So the written reflex has two steps: find the real subject, then ask which family the verb belongs to. Silent family — write -ent even though you hear nothing. Audible family — the correct form is the one you would say. The items below drill both directions: choosing forms you cannot hear, and trusting the ones you can.

Going further

Minimal pairs. One change between the two sentences, and what it does:

Liaison makes an -er plural audible before a verb starting with a vowel: elle aime [ɛlɛm] / elles‿aiment [ɛlzɛm]; il arrive / ils‿arrivent. The [z] is the plural.

Silent plurals outside -er: il voit / ils voient, il croit / ils croient, il rit / ils rient; and the -ir verbs conjugated like -er — ils ouvrent, ils offrent, ils cueillent.

Find the real subject before writing -ent: after an inversion (Que pensent tes parents ?), after qui (les enfants qui jouent), far from the verb, or behind a quantity (La plupart des gens pensent).

In Russian the plural is heard — читает / читают — so checking by ear feels natural. In French it fails: check by the subject, in writing.

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