Drago「Corrigez-moi」

[sick snow]

Please be patient

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[vague sparrow]

think of it like "penser à" is just a part of the phrase

where something like parler, dire, donner, just have indirect objects which happen to take à

does that make sense?

[silk socket]

🤔 Icic, so essentially it's just that the direct object takes à, while those other verbs actually take indirect object

[vague sparrow]

we don't call it the direct object, but basically yeah

[silk socket]

Would you say the fact that it's only transitive rather than ditransitive has anything to do with it? Like, if a verb is unable to take an indirect object, but has à for the direct object, then it'll follow this penser à pattern?

[vague sparrow]

no, parler is intransitive too

there is no strict rule, but generally those that take lui apply mostly to people

[silk socket]

Æ pain

Ig this is just a read read read and you'll get the vibe of it kind of thing? Or are there like lists which exhaustively cover all of these weird à verbs?

[vague sparrow]

yeah, just read

it's actually not as hard as it seems, once you start reading

[silk socket]

🫠 Oh well, fair enough

[vague sparrow]

once you've seen "je pense a toi" you basically know that "je te pense" is impossible

because why would you say the former when you could say the latter

[mental socket]

also, we don't use y for people, so it would be weird to say « j'y pense » for « je pense à Bob », we just say « je pense à lui »