Questions & Answers about L'ail est fort mais je l'aime.
Why does the sentence use l' before ail when the English translation is just "Garlic"?
In French, you must use a definite article (le, la, l', les) when talking about a noun in a general sense. English drops the article to say "Garlic is strong," but French requires it, literally saying "The garlic is strong."
In the phrase je l'aime, what does the l' represent?
It is the direct object pronoun le, meaning "it", standing in for l'ail (garlic). It contracts to l' because aime starts with a vowel. Even though we translate it as "it", French uses masculine and feminine pronouns to match the gender of the noun they replace.
I learned that aimer means "to love" with people. Does je l'aime here mean "I love it" or "I like it"?