Question about the French langauge?

Question

In the French language, when using le, la, or example: l'ocean (le, la , l' all mean "the" in English) in a sentence, how do you know which one is the proper form of "the" to use? Does it matter how the sentence is written? Does it come before nouns or verbs? Thanks to all who answer respectively!!

Answer 1

for plural, it is always "les."
for singular beginning with a vowel (eau, orreilles, etc), you use: l'
Le or La are singular, and depend on the gender of the word. Le garcon (the boy) or la fille (the girl). inanimate objects have gender too; you have to learn the genders as you learn vocabulary; there is no easy rule (ansd they don't always make sense - a man's shirt is feminine but a woman's is male).

Answer 2

The "le" or "la" depends on the gender of the noun that follows. We don't have gender nouns in English and there really is no trick to learning which ones are which. The only tip I know is that usually if the word ends in "e" it is feminine but this is not always true. If the word is feminine it is preceded by la, when it is mascline it is proceded by le, and l' is used when the word starts with a vowel.

Answer 3

Here:
http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/grammar/le_or_la_in_french.shtml

"Le" is masculine; "la" is feminine. You can often tell by the spelling of the noun if it is masculine or feminine, but as you can see, there are exceptions.

You use l' before a noun, either feminine or masculine, that begins with a vowel.