cattywampus4748

[rustic notch]

Please be patient

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[fossil gale]

that's the article, and articles agree with their nouns in gender and number

same reason why you can't have « la chaises »

[mental dragon]

To put it another way:

• le and la always contract before vowels and silent h’s
• les never contracts

[kind thistle]

Only an orthographical vowel (e or on rare occasions another vowel) can contract like this.

Les ends in an -s and not a vowel, so it doesn't contract. What happens however is that the normally silent -s gets pronounced as a z sound when before a vowel.