Breakdown of Le professeur les encourage à continuer le judo.
le professeur
the teacher
continuer
to continue
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
les
them (direct object pronoun)
le judo
the judo
encourager à
to encourage to
Questions & Answers about Le professeur les encourage à continuer le judo.
Why do we need the word à between encourage and continuer?
In French, many verbs need a specific preposition to connect them to a following infinitive. The verb encourager is one of them. The set structure to learn is encourager quelqu'un à faire quelque chose (to encourage someone to do something).
Why do we use les here instead of leur?
The verb encourager takes a direct object for the person you are encouraging. Because of this, we must use the direct object pronoun les (them). If the verb took an indirect object (meaning it was naturally followed by the preposition à for the person, like parler à), we would use leur instead.
Why does les come before encourage and not before continuer?
Object pronouns always go immediately before the verb they are connected to. In this sentence, the teacher is encouraging them, so les belongs to encourage. If the pronoun replaced the sport instead (like telling the teacher to 'continue it'), the pronoun would go right before continuer.
Why does the sentence say le judo when English just says 'continue judo'?
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