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)
	la (f)
	les (pl)

• 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.