Regarde le grand bassin que cachent les nénuphars.
Look at the large pond that the water lilies hide.
Breakdown of Regarde le grand bassin que cachent les nénuphars.
grand
big / tall
regarder
to watch
cacher
to hide
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
Questions & Answers about Regarde le grand bassin que cachent les nénuphars.
Why is the verb cachent placed before the subject les nénuphars?
This is a stylistic subject-verb inversion. In a relative clause starting with the direct object que, French often allows you to flip the subject and the verb. Saying que cachent les nénuphars instead of que les nénuphars cachent sounds more elegant and prevents the sentence from ending awkwardly with a verb.
Since the relative pronoun is followed immediately by a verb, shouldn't we use qui instead of que?
No, because the pond isn't doing the hiding! The pronoun que acts as the direct object, while les nénuphars is the subject doing the action. If you used qui (the subject pronoun), it would mean the pond is hiding the water lilies. The stylistic inversion puts the verb next to que, which is a classic reading trap for English speakers.
Why is cachent plural if it comes right after the singular bassin?
Would I use bassin to talk about any kind of pond?