Learn French: D'où vient ce pigment ? On doute qu'il soit vieux. - Where does this pigment come from? We doubt that it is old.

D'où vient ce pigment ? On doute qu'il soit vieux.

Where does this pigment come from? We doubt that it is old.

Breakdown of D'où vient ce pigment ? On doute qu'il soit vieux.

Questions & Answers about D'où vient ce pigment ? On doute qu'il soit vieux.

Why do we use soit (the subjunctive) instead of est here?

The phrase douter que (to doubt that) expresses uncertainty, which is a classic trigger for the subjunctive mood. Therefore, we must use soit, the subjunctive form of être.

How would the second sentence change if we wanted to say 'We suspect that it is old'?

You would use the reflexive verb se douter que. Because se douter que means you actually believe or suspect something is true, it takes the indicative mood instead of the subjunctive. The sentence would become: On se doute qu'il est vieux.

In the first sentence, why is the verb placed before the subject (vient ce pigment) without a hyphenated pronoun?

This is a stylistic inversion. In questions starting with certain interrogative words like d'où, où, or quand, you can invert the verb and a noun subject directly. It is a bit more elegant than saying D'où est-ce que ce pigment vient ? but means exactly the same thing.

Why does the second sentence use il instead of ce (as in ce soit vieux)?