Learn French: Voici les palmiers exotiques que plantent les jardiniers. - Here are the exotic palm trees that the gardeners are planting.

Voici les palmiers exotiques que plantent les jardiniers.

Here are the exotic palm trees that the gardeners are planting.

Breakdown of Voici les palmiers exotiques que plantent les jardiniers.

him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)

voici

here is, this is

que

that (introducing a clause)

le jardinier

the gardener

Questions & Answers about Voici les palmiers exotiques que plantent les jardiniers.

Why is the verb before the subject in que plantent les jardiniers?

This is called stylistic inversion. In a relative clause starting with que (or où, dont), you can reverse the normal subject-verb order if the subject is a noun like les jardiniers. It means exactly the same thing as que les jardiniers plantent but sounds a bit more elegant and is very common in written French.

Could we use this same inverted word order if the subject was a pronoun, like "they"?

No. Stylistic inversion in relative clauses is only allowed when the subject is a full noun or noun phrase. If you wanted to say "that they are planting", you must use the standard word order: qu'ils plantent.

With the reversed word order, how do we know grammatically who is doing the planting?

The relative pronoun que is the key. Que always acts as the direct object of the relative clause, representing les palmiers exotiques here. Because the verb already has its direct object in the form of que, the noun following the verb (les jardiniers) has to be the subject.

Is it mandatory to invert the subject and verb here?

Not at all! You can absolutely say Voici les palmiers exotiques que les jardiniers plantent. Stylistic inversion is just an optional choice that native speakers often use to make the sentence flow better, especially when the subject noun is longer than the verb itself.