Questions & Answers about La cire est très épaisse et j'en touche la surface.
Why does this sentence use en instead of a possessive adjective like sa to mean 'its'?
For inanimate objects like la cire (the wax), French traditionally avoids possessive adjectives (son, sa, ses) when the possessed noun is the direct object of the verb. Instead, it uses the pronoun en (meaning 'of it') before the verb, and a definite article (la) before the noun. Literally, it translates to 'I of it touch the surface'.
Is it wrong to say je touche sa surface instead?
Not completely. In everyday spoken French, you will frequently hear je touche sa surface. However, using en with the definite article is considered much more elegant and remains the standard grammatical rule for inanimate objects in written or careful French, which is why you are studying it at the B2 level.
How does en logically translate to 'its' in this grammatical structure?
Why is the adjective épaisse spelled with a double 's' here?