Breakdown of Je crois que ce pollen est pur, et j'en aime l'odeur.
je
I
être
to be
et
and
aimer
to like, to love
ce
this (before a noun)
en
in, to
croire
to believe
que
that (introducing a clause)
pur
pure
l'odeur
the smell (f)
le pollen
the pollen
Questions & Answers about Je crois que ce pollen est pur, et j'en aime l'odeur.
Why do we use en ... l'odeur instead of son odeur for "its smell"?
While you could hear et j'aime son odeur in everyday conversational French, traditional French grammar prefers using en + the definite article (le, la, l', or les) to show possession for inanimate objects. Because ce pollen is a thing rather than a person, we use en to literally say "I like the smell of it."
Why do we still need the article l' before odeur? Doesn't en already do the job of "its"?
Not exactly. The pronoun en doesn't literally mean "its"; it replaces a phrase starting with de (in this case, de ce pollen, meaning "of this pollen"). Since en translates to "of it", you still need the definite article l' to say "the smell". Structurally, the sentence is saying "I of it like the smell."
Why does en go before the verb aime instead of next to odeur?
En is an object pronoun. In French, object pronouns almost always go immediately before the conjugated verb they are attached to. Even though en conceptually modifies l'odeur, grammatically it acts as an argument of the verb, so it must be placed right in front of aime.
Why is est in the indicative rather than the subjunctive after Je crois que?
Verbs expressing a belief or opinion, such as croire and penser, take the indicative mood in affirmative statements because you are stating something you consider to be a reality. You only trigger the subjunctive if the verb of believing is negative (Je ne crois pas que ce pollen soit pur) or inverted in a question.
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