Owen

[proper fossil]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[dark dew]

It's missing a comma:
"Il peut s'en passer, des choses"

"il se passe des choses" means "things happen"

"il peut se passer des choses" means "things can happen"

"il peut s'en passer, des choses" means the same thing but uses dislocation, a common process in spoken French where the main subject or object of a sentence is repeated twice: as a pronoun, and as the full noun. Usually for the purposes of emphasis.

In this case it emphasizes that a lot of things can happen over the course of 4 months.

Another example of quantity emphasis using dislocation:

Tu as des voitures = you have cars
Tu en as, des voitures ! = you have a lot of cars!

[exotic merlin]

great explanation

thanks for that

[autumn spruce]

what im about to say is not quite relevant to this because youve already had an explanation and my understanding of this phrase you ask about is like "a lot can happen in 4 months" but i also wanted to point out
s'en passer de qqch is also a way to say doing without something, like je ne pourrais pas m'en passer de mon portable → i couldn't do without my phone
:D

[dark dew]

it would be "se passer de quelque chose", unless once again you're using dislocation and are therefore using a pronoun to repeat the thing you can do without

Je ne peux pas me passer de mon portable = I can't live without my phone
Je ne peux pas m'en passer, de mon portable = I really can't live without my phone

[autumn spruce]

ah !!!!

my bad hehehe

i <3 this construction im so sad i forgot about it until seeing this post hehe

merci kitties 🫡