Breakdown of Est-ce qu'on fait un pique-nique à midi ?
un
a / an (masculine)
on
one / we (informal)
à
at / to / in (general locations) / about (what one thinks about / reacts to)
est-ce que
is it that / do / does (question marker)
faire
to do, to make
midi
noon
le pique-nique
the picnic
Questions & Answers about Est-ce qu'on fait un pique-nique à midi ?
Why does the French sentence use on when the English translation says "we"?
In conversational French, people use on to mean "we" much more often than the formal word for we (nous). Even though on originally means "one" (as in "one does this"), in everyday speech like this sentence, it almost always means "we".
If on means "we", why is the verb fait instead of faisons?
Even though on means "we" in casual conversation, it strictly acts as a singular pronoun grammatically. It always takes the same verb form as il (he) or elle (she). So, we use fait (he/she/one does) instead of the nous form (faisons).
Why is the verb fait used here instead of a French word for "having"?
Why is it written as qu'on instead of que on?
In French, when short words like que end in an "e" and the next word begins with a vowel (like the "o" in on), the "e" is dropped and replaced with an apostrophe. This makes the phrase flow smoothly when spoken.
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