#Why is en needed here?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

fervent breachBOT
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Why is en needed here?

rare dagger
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Disent des choses

coral arch
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Ok, de is en, but why does en have to be included here?

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Specifically

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In English we just say pictures say blahblah so that’s why it’s not making sense to me.

rare dagger
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I'm not 100% sure it's required but I thiiink it is because of "plus long"?

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It's sort of like "can tell you more things/more about it"

coral arch
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Ahhh ok

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That helps when I try to read it like that.

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“The images about it say often well more long than the words”

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Still hard because in English the “about it/about them” doesn’t even enter the equation so I wouldn’t even think to say that or include it. I feel that’s idiomatic to French and need to develop a feeling for when en should be included.

mortal shuttle
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i think it's like adjectives need en in order to function as adverbs or something like that

coral arch
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I feel like French has a tendency to want to “complete” verbs with it when English doesn’t.

coral arch
mortal shuttle
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plus, long, 6 are all normally adjectives

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but in sentences with en they don't actually modify a noun, they modify the verb

coral arch
mortal shuttle
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this is just an observation. it's not like a strictly productive grammatical rule

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but none of those adjectives or verbs normally use de

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en just indicates that there's an indefinite quantity being modified

coral arch
rare dagger
strong raft
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The correct sentence is "Les images en disent parfois bien plus que les mots."

coral arch