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Use of en in Assimil New French with Ease | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 1 of 7 19 February 2012 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Today I did lesson 16, and was a little confused by the use of en before a verb as in the following sentences:
I can understand the 2nd and 4th examples, but what does the un do in the 1st and 3rd examples? I looked it up in my little grammar (Barron's French Grammar) and the only examples it gives are j'en ai and je n'en ai pas. But no example with un/une. Does it simply add the meaning "one" as in "I will fine you one" (with un) instead of "I will find it for you" (without the un)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 2 of 7 19 February 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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"en" means something like "of it, of them" and replaces a combination of de + noun.
http://www.learnfrenchathome.com/grammaire_pronoms%20en_y.ht m shows some examples. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 7 19 February 2012 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Un en examples 1 and 3 means "one":
I'm going to look for one. He is going to bring one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 7 20 February 2012 at 5:35am | IP Logged | ||
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If you said X"je vais vous chercher un" or X"il va apporter un", the sentences would be incomplete. In other words, the article "un" always needs to be
followed by a noun. However, to avoid repeating that noun, you can also replace it with "en". The confusion comes from the fact that "un" can be both "a" and "one" in English. If you say "I will bring you a", you can see that it's obviously incomplete. So you use "one" instead. In French, we use "en + un". Note that the same would apply to other numbers : j'en ai deux, vous en voulez trois, ils en ont apporté quatre, etc. To be even pickier, note also that this type of construction will always require a verb in French, even when English wouldn't need one. For instance, to express "I love books, so I never leave home without at least one", you will actually have to insert some verb and say something like "j'adore les livres, alors je ne quitte jamais la maison sans EN AMENER au moins un". Edited by Arekkusu on 20 February 2012 at 5:42am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 5 of 7 23 February 2012 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the case of numbers, I always try to think of "en" as the thing that follows the number, or instead of a number an indefinite article, "une/un". As far as I know, you can't leave out the number.
Cet hôtel a cinquante chambres. This hotel has fifty rooms Il en a cinquante. He has one. en = room Veux-tu une pomme? Do you want an apple? Oui, j'en veux une. Yes, I want one. en = apple I see "en" with "il y a" a lot. For me this is the easiest one to use because it's really common. Il y a des eleves qui fument? Are there any students who smoke? Oui, il y en a beaucoup. Yes, there are a lot of the students. Il y en a ceux qui fument. There are those of the students who smoke. To get back to the original post, I think there's another lesson where "en" crops up a lot and that's lesson 78, and that one's a real headache, because it deals with more than one object in a sentence. It's really good, but hard. I had to supplement the lesson with other materials/examples. Edited by Sunja on 23 February 2012 at 1:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spiderkat Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5813 days ago 175 posts - 248 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 7 23 February 2012 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||
This one is wrong. It'll be either Il y en a qui fument or Il y a ceux qui fument. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 7 of 7 24 February 2012 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
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oops!^^ That came from an interview with a French student. I just picked it up and put it in my Anki deck. I'll make a note of the correction. Thanks, Spiderkat!
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