Hi
In my reading of French recipes recently I came across a series of basic steps in making a salad and then discovered the sentence ending in “…éplucher les.(…peel them)” I wasn’t aware that pronouns can succeed verbs in French. I thought they only precede them. Apparently they can succeed them as well. When do pronouns succeed verbs in French? Is it in as in my example, a series of steps and then as in English “…and peel them”. I couldn’t find a rule online. I look forward to your feedback.
Well, in that case it’s when the pronoun is the direct object; it could also happen for an indirect object. A pronoun always substitutes either a nominal group (such as the subject of a sentence) or a prepositional one (such as an indirect object).
You can say “éplucher les tomates”, or you can say “éplucher les”. You can “donne les pommes à ton père” or you can “donne-lui les”. There are other constructions with the same meaning that will shuffle a pronoun to the front and/or ellide one; they’re alternate versions, not exclusive ones.
Thanks Nava. Very helpful indeed!
The word les can be an article or a pronoun. In the construct “éplucher les tomates”, it’s an article and the object is tomates, of course. In the imperative, second person plural: “épluchez-les !” , les is a pronoun representing the object.
[QUOTE=Nava]
You can say “éplucher les tomates”, or you can say “éplucher les”. You can “donne les pommes à ton père” or you can “donne-lui les”
[/QUOTE]
Actually, in the second example it should be “donne-les-lui”. Don’t ask me why, it’s just the way it works : “Prête-moi le machin, prête-le-moi !”
Otherwise the gist is correct : to avoid repetitions (which we French try to avoid at all costs) you can omit a noun already present in the previous sentence as long as it doesn’t cause confusion, by basically turning a pronoun into a noun. In which case context makes it clear what the pronoun refers to. In the first example, “épluchez les” would be understood as “épluchez les [tomates dont je viens de parler]”
It’s not necessarily after the verb although that is the normal case. It’s quite common in instruction lists (recipes, how-tos etc…) to go “1) rincer la salade. 2) la couper en lamelles.” or something like that, however (i.e. when you’re using the passive form).
I shouldn’t do this since my French is pretty watery, but my impression is that an object pronoun precedes the verb when the sentence has a subject. With imperatives or infinitives (AFAIK, infinitives can function as imperatives), the object pronoun follows.
Merci, I wasn’t sure which would be the more usual one. Stupid coin fell on the wrong side.
Le machin. I didn’t learn this word in high school French; I learned it from a North African girlfriend. When I used it with my French colleagues they were quite amused. “Le truc” was their preferred term.
(But that was long long ago. The sensuous girl who called everything machin probably has several grandkids by now. :smack: )
My wife thinks that you prepose object pronouns unless the sentence starts with the verb. She gives as an example: “Ne me la dites pas”.
There’s a fixed order for placing object pronouns in French:
- Reflexive pronouns (me, te, etc.)
- Direct objects (le, la, les)
- Indirect objects (lui, leur)
- The pronoun y (à + something, a place, etc.)
- The pronoun *en *(de + something, a quantity, etc.)
There’s a slightly different order for imperative sentences (and another slight difference according to polarity), but that’s the basic idea. There are probably a few exceptions, too, because it’s French.
Heh, that’s one semantic field where I feel French beats English hands down. We have just about a million words for “unidentified/undefined/unimportant thing”. Machin, truc, bidule, chose, machin-chouette, trucmuche, bazar, bastringue, bitonio, fourbi, schmilblick, zinzin, zigouigoui, camelote… each referring to its own defined space of undefined, if you follow my meaning :).