Learn French: On garde le manuel ? Oui, il nous le laisse. - Are we keeping the textbook? Yes, he is leaving it to us.

On garde le manuel ? Oui, il nous le laisse.

Are we keeping the textbook? Yes, he is leaving it to us.

Breakdown of On garde le manuel ? Oui, il nous le laisse.

one / we (informal)

nous

we / us (object pronoun)

oui

yes

Questions & Answers about On garde le manuel ? Oui, il nous le laisse.

Why is the order nous le laisse instead of le nous laisse?

In French, when you have a double object pronoun where one is a 1st or 2nd person (like me, te, nous, vous) and the other is a 3rd person direct object (le, la, les), the 1st or 2nd person pronoun always comes first. That is why nous comes before le.

What exactly does le replace in the second sentence?

The pronoun le acts as the direct object meaning 'it'. It replaces the masculine noun le manuel from the first question so we do not have to repeat it.

The first sentence uses On for 'we'. Why does the second sentence use nous for 'us'?

In everyday French, on is the standard way to say 'we' as a subject. However, on does not have a matching object pronoun form. Whenever you need to say 'to us' or 'us' as an object, you must switch to nous, even if you just used on as the subject.

Could I use the verb quitter instead of laisser here to mean 'leaving'?