Learn French: Elle pense que cette innovation aura du succès. - She thinks that this innovation will be successful.

Elle pense que cette innovation aura du succès.

She thinks that this innovation will be successful.

Breakdown of Elle pense que cette innovation aura du succès.

some (partitive, masculine)

Questions & Answers about Elle pense que cette innovation aura du succès.

Why doesn't Elle pense que trigger the subjunctive here?

In French, verbs of opinion and belief like penser (to think) and croire (to believe) take the indicative when they are affirmative. They only trigger the subjunctive when they are negative (like Elle ne pense pas que...) or used in an inverted question.

The English translation says "will be successful," so why does the French sentence use aura (will have)?

In French, you don't "be" successful, you "have" success. The phrase is avoir du succès. The word aura is the future tense of avoir, so it literally translates to "will have success."

Why do we need du before succès?

Du is a partitive article (a combination of de + le). French uses partitive articles to talk about an unknown quantity of something uncountable, similar to "some" in English. So, avoir du succès literally means "to have some success."

Why is cette used for "this" instead of ce?

Cette is the feminine singular word for "this" or "that". Almost all French nouns ending in -tion (like innovation) are feminine, so we must use cette rather than the masculine ce or cet.