Question 1

Why do we say l'un and not just un here?

Accepted Answer

When contrasting two specific people or things, French uses the definite article le or la (elided to l' here) before un to form the pronoun l'un. It works together with l'autre to mean "the one... the other". If you just used un, it would sound like "a" or the number "one" without pointing to a specific half of a pair.

Question 2

Why aren't there object pronouns before the verbs, like L'équipe le protège?

Accepted Answer

In this sentence, l'un and l'autre act as independent direct objects for the verbs protège and sacrifie. Because these contrast pronouns are already filling the role of the direct object on their own, you don't need additional object pronouns like le or la before the verbs.

Question 3

How would the sentence change if we were talking about two female players?

Accepted Answer

You would need to make the first pronoun feminine: L'équipe protège l'une, mais sacrifie l'autre. The word autre is the same for both masculine and feminine, but its article would normally change to match. Because autre starts with a vowel, the article is always elided to l'autre regardless of gender.

Question 4

Can we use the plural les uns and les autres in this exact same structure?

Accepted Answer

Yes! If the team were dealing with two groups of people instead of two individuals, you would use the plural pronouns: L'équipe protège les uns, mais sacrifie les autres (The team protects some, but sacrifices the others).

L'équipe protège l'un, mais sacrifie l'autre.

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