ELONIO
Log inSign up

Pour peindre ce tissu, tu dois utiliser un pinceau.

Pour peindre ce tissu, tu dois utiliser un pinceau.
To paint this fabric, you must use a paintbrush.
From Lesson 108:Pronoun placement with infinitives (le faire)·French

Questions & Answers about Pour peindre ce tissu, tu dois utiliser un pinceau.

If I wanted to shorten the first part to say "To paint it", where would the object pronoun go?
In French, an object pronoun goes right before the infinitive verb it belongs to. Since you are painting "it", the pronoun goes before peindre. "This fabric" (ce tissu) is masculine, so you'd use le: Pour le peindre, tu dois utiliser un pinceau.
What if I wanted to replace the paintbrush with a pronoun and say "you must use it"?
Just like the first example, the pronoun goes directly in front of the infinitive verb, which here is utiliser. Since pinceau is masculine, you use le, which drops its "e" before a vowel sound: ...tu dois l'utiliser.
Why does the sentence start with Pour? Doesn't that usually mean "for"?
When you put pour before an infinitive verb (an unconjugated verb like peindre), it means "in order to" or just "to" when showing the purpose of an action. So Pour peindre... translates to "To paint..." or "In order to paint...".
Why is it ce tissu and not cet tissu?
Tissu is a masculine word starting with a consonant, so it takes the standard masculine word for "this", which is ce. You only use cet for masculine words that start with a vowel or a silent "h" (like cet arbre for "this tree").

Learn Pour peindre ce tissu, tu dois utiliser un pinceau and more in French

All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.

  • ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
  • ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
  • ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free
Start learning French →