Breakdown of Elle nous a dit que son petit-fils jouait dans le jardin.
elle
she
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
dans
in, inside
avoir
to have
jouer
to play
son
his/her/its
le jardin
the garden (also in "to do the gardening")
dire
to say, to tell
que
that (introducing a clause)
le petit-fils
the grandson
Questions & Answers about Elle nous a dit que son petit-fils jouait dans le jardin.
Why is jouait in the imparfait tense?
This sentence uses reported speech, which is the focus of your current lesson! If she said this directly, she would use the present tense: Mon petit-fils joue (My grandson is playing). Because the reporting verb is in the past (Elle a dit), the rules of French tense agreement require us to shift that present tense back into the imparfait (jouait).
Why is nous placed before the verb instead of after it?
In French, object pronouns like nous (which means to us here) must be placed right in front of the conjugated verb. Since the verb is in the passé composé, the pronoun goes before the auxiliary verb a, making it Elle nous a dit (She told us).
Since the speaker is female (Elle), why do we use son instead of sa?
Do we always need the word que in this type of sentence?
Yes. In English, we can often drop the word that and just say She told us her grandson was playing. In French, the conjunction que is strictly required to connect the two parts of the sentence and can never be skipped.
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