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Est-ce qu'il parle de la recherche sur notre famille ? Oui, il en parle souvent.

Est-ce qu'il parle de la recherche sur notre famille ? Oui, il en parle souvent.
Is he talking about the research on our family? Yes, he talks about it often.
From Lesson 235:The pronoun 'en' with verbs (en)·French

Questions & Answers about Est-ce qu'il parle de la recherche sur notre famille ? Oui, il en parle souvent.

Why do we use en in the answer instead of la for 'it'?
The verb parler takes the preposition de when it means 'to talk about' something. The pronoun en replaces an entire phrase starting with de (here, de la recherche sur notre famille). You would use la or le to replace a direct object, but because of the de, we must use en.
Why does en go before the verb?
In French, object pronouns like en almost always go immediately before the conjugated verb they belong to. Unlike English, where we say 'talks about it' at the end, French puts the pronoun before the verb: il en parle.
Could I put souvent before the verb, just like 'he often talks about it' in English?
No, short adverbs like souvent (often) generally go right after the conjugated verb in French. So it must be il en parle souvent, never il souvent en parle.
Why is the preposition sur used after recherche instead of de?
When you mean academic or informational research about a topic, French uses recherche sur. If you used de (la recherche de notre famille), it would change the meaning to 'the search for our family', as if your relatives were physically missing.

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