Learn French: Les archives de nos ancêtres, j'aimerais en discuter. - The archives of our ancestors, I would like to discuss them.

In English, we say 'to discuss [something]', but in French, the verb is discuter de quelque chose. Whenever you replace an inanimate object or idea introduced by the preposition de (here, des archives de nos ancêtres), you must use the pronoun en.

Why does en go right before discuter instead of in front of aimerais?

When you have a conjugated verb followed by an infinitive like aimerais + discuter, the object pronoun usually goes right before the infinitive it logically attaches to. You want to discuss them, so en goes directly before discuter.

Why start the sentence with Les archives de nos ancêtres instead of just saying J'aimerais discuter des archives?

Moving the topic to the very beginning of the sentence is a common habit in spoken French. It sets up the subject you want to talk about, and then you use a pronoun like en in the main sentence to refer back to it. It sounds very natural and adds emphasis.

How can I tell if aimerais is the future tense or the conditional?