Breakdown of Il ne veut pas lâcher le jouet.
il
he
ne
not (used before the verb)
pas
not (used after the verb)
vouloir
to want
le jouet
the toy
lâcher
to drop / to let go of
Questions & Answers about Il ne veut pas lâcher le jouet.
How would you tell him "Drop it!" using the vocabulary in this sentence?
You would say Lâche-le ! As you are learning in this lesson, in affirmative commands, the direct object pronoun (le for "it", replacing le jouet) attaches to the end of the verb with a hyphen. Also, remember that for -er verbs like lâcher, you drop the final s in the tu form of the command (lâche instead of lâches).
If I want to change the sentence to "He doesn't want to drop it", where does the pronoun go?
It becomes Il ne veut pas le lâcher. Even though in commands like Lâche-le ! the pronoun goes at the end, in a standard sentence with two verbs, the pronoun goes immediately before the infinitive verb it belongs to (lâcher).
Why isn't lâcher conjugated here?
When you use two verbs together in French to express a single idea, only the first one is conjugated. Since veut (wants) is already conjugated, the second verb, lâcher (to drop), stays in its infinitive (dictionary) form.
I thought "to drop" was translated using tomber. Why does this sentence use lâcher?
Tomber just means "to fall". To say "to drop" (as an action you do to an object), you generally use laisser tomber (literally "to let fall") or lâcher. Lâcher specifically means "to let go of" or "to release." Since he is physically holding the toy and refusing to let go, lâcher is the most natural choice here.
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