OffQc | Québécois French Guide

If you know the television show, you know the answer to the question: Tout le monde en parle.

There’s that en again… A reader of OffQc mentioned this show’s name after we looked at en the first time back in #1060. It’s a good starting point to look at another way en is used.

Remember how en goes before the conjugated verb? For example, j’en veux un. I want one (of them). En means of them here.

But en can also translate as about it, like in the television show title Tout le monde en parle. In fact, en can translate as a lot of things: of them, of it, about it, about them, some, some of it, some of them, none, none of it, none of them… (Have pity on the learner of English who has to learn all those. In French, on the other hand, you just have to say en.)

Let’s use tout le monde en parle as our model.

Tout le monde en parle.
Tout le monde en bénéficie.
Tout le monde en souffre.
Tout le monde en profite.
Tout le monde en rêve.

Loosely speaking, en means of it in all of these. Everybody’s talking of it. Everybody benefits of it. Everybody suffers of it. Everybody profits of it. Everybody dreams of it.

Of course, that’s not idiomatic English. In English, you say: Everybody’s talking about it. Everybody benefits from it. Everybody suffers from it. Everybody profits from it. Everybody dreams of it. But you can see how the sense behind them all is of it.

Maybe you noticed that with all the examples above, we can put de after the verb:

parler de quelque chose
bénéficier de quelque chose
souffrir de quelque chose
profiter de quelque chose
rêver de quelque chose

Je parle de mon problème.
J’en parle.

Je bénéficie de leur aide.
J’en bénéficie.

Je souffre de reflux gastrique.
J’en souffre.

Je profite du beau temps.
J’en profite.

Je rêve de partir en Australie.
J’en rêve.

With the past tense, remember that en goes before the auxiliary.

Tout le monde en a parlé.
Tu en as bénéficié.
J’en ai souffert.
Il en a profité.
J’en ai rêvé.

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Keep reading about en:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3 (that’s this post)
• Part 4