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[untold dawn]

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[brittle fractal]

The verb « aller » needs a complement as in the place you are going towards. If you just say « je dois aller », the sentence is incomplete; where are you going? In order to complete it, you add « y » which replaces locations: « Je dois y aller »

« y » can stand for a bunch of stuff like « en France, au parc, dans le cinéma » so it's vague

[low galleon]

its an indirect object pronoun

its for other prepositions besides à and de

i think

[rugged veldt]

What about je dois aller là?

[brittle fractal]

It works but it does give a specific direction

[rugged veldt]

Ok merci

[brittle fractal]

Well à can be replaced with y

Je m'intéresse au problème qui nous concerne —> Je m'y intéresse

That's in fact its principal use

It replacing places is an extension, I would say

[copper hare]

Although it doesn’t help that, on its own, it’s equivalent to “je m’en vais” i.e “ I’m leaving”
But essentially it’s just a phrase in that sense. The “y” in this case is just “home” or “out of here”

But if we are talking about some interesting expo somewhere etc and we say “on doit y aller” or even “je doit y aller” it’ll be understood that you mean the expo in that particular case

But there I’d probably say something like “il faut y aller” or “il faut qu’on y aille”