Learn French: Le registre qui est dans le grenier, tu t'en souviens ? - The register that is in the attic, do you remember it?

Le registre qui est dans le grenier, tu t'en souviens ?

The register that is in the attic, do you remember it?

Breakdown of Le registre qui est dans le grenier, tu t'en souviens ?

être

to be

you (informal singular)

Questions & Answers about Le registre qui est dans le grenier, tu t'en souviens ?

Why do we use en here instead of le to say 'remember it'?

The verb for 'to remember' is se souvenir de. Because it requires the preposition de, we cannot use a direct object pronoun like le. Instead, to replace an inanimate object introduced by de (which would be de ce registre if we didn't use a pronoun), we must use the pronoun en.

Why is it t'en and what is the exact word order happening here?

Pronouns have a strict order in French. The reflexive pronoun te comes before en. Because te ends in a vowel and en starts with one, the e in te is dropped to avoid a vowel clash, combining them into t'en.

Why is the register mentioned at the very beginning of the sentence instead of at the end?

This is a very common structure in spoken French called left-dislocation. Instead of asking a single standard sentence like Tu te souviens du registre qui est dans le grenier ?, speakers often announce the topic first to get your attention, and then ask the question using a pronoun (en) to refer back to it.

Could I use the verb se rappeler instead of se souvenir for this sentence?