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Nous voulons nous lever tôt aujourd'hui.

Nous voulons nous lever tôt aujourd'hui.
We want to get up early today.
From Lesson 59:Reflexive pronouns (me, te, se, nous, vous)·French

Questions & Answers about Nous voulons nous lever tôt aujourd'hui.

Why are there two nous words in this sentence?
The first nous is the subject, meaning "we". The second nous is a reflexive pronoun. In French, the verb for "to get up" is se lever, which literally means "to raise oneself". Because the subject is "we", that reflexive pronoun has to match it, becoming "ourselves" (nous). So literally, this sentence says "We want to raise ourselves early today."
Why is the second nous placed before lever instead of after it?
In French, reflexive pronouns almost always go immediately before the verb they belong to. Even though in English we might say "to get ourselves up," the French pronoun nous steps right in front of the infinitive verb lever.
Why isn't lever conjugated like voulons?
When you have two verbs together where the second one completes the thought of the first, only the first verb gets conjugated. Voulons is conjugated to match the subject nous ("we want"), leaving the second verb lever in its dictionary form ("to get up").
Why does the word aujourd'hui have an apostrophe in it?
It comes from an old phrase that literally meant "on the day of this day," combining several older French words. Today, it is just a single vocabulary word meaning "today." You don't need to break it down, just memorize the spelling as a whole!

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