Learn French: Des olives, j'en ai haché une douzaine. - Olives, I chopped a dozen of them.

Des olives, j'en ai haché une douzaine.

Olives, I chopped a dozen of them.

Breakdown of Des olives, j'en ai haché une douzaine.

une

a / an (feminine)

des

some (plural indefinite)

avoir

to have

Questions & Answers about Des olives, j'en ai haché une douzaine.

Why doesn't haché agree with olives and become hachées?

This is the exact exception your current lesson covers. Normally, a preceding direct object makes the past participle agree. However, when that direct object is the pronoun en (meaning 'of them'), the past participle never agrees. It stays in the default masculine singular form, haché.

Is une douzaine considered the direct object here?

No, une douzaine is a quantifier showing how many you chopped. The actual direct object is the pronoun en, which appears before the verb. Since en blocks past participle agreement, haché remains invariable regardless of the quantifier.

Why is Des olives separated by a comma at the beginning of the sentence?

This structure is called left-dislocation, which is very common in spoken French for emphasis. By stating Des olives upfront, you introduce the topic, and then you use the pronoun en in the main clause to refer back to it. It is like saying 'As for the olives, I chopped a dozen of them.'

If I didn't want to emphasize the olives at the start, how would I write this sentence?

Without the emphasis, you wouldn't need the pronoun en because the noun wouldn't be displaced. The sentence would simply be J'ai haché une douzaine d'olives. Notice that haché still does not agree here, because the direct object comes after the verb.