le, la and les are the french equivalents for the.

As French makes a distinction between "masculine and feminine objects", people use le for masculine things/persons and la for feminine things/persons.

However, in the plural, only les is used whatever the gender is.

Anglais Français
the le (m) Audio. Press to listen!
la (f) Audio. Press to listen!
les (pl) Audio. Press to listen!
  • Le téléphone > les téléphones
  • La télévision > les télévisions

When the following noun begins with a vowel, le or la becomes l'.

  • L'ordinateur (m) the computer > les ordinateurs
  • L'île (f) the island > les îles

NB: you may have noticed that making plural is easy: most of the time, it consists in adding an "s" to the noun.