Breakdown of L'équipe protège l'un, mais sacrifie l'autre.
mais
but
l'équipe
the team (f)
protéger
to protect
sacrifier
to sacrifice
Questions & Answers about L'équipe protège l'un, mais sacrifie l'autre.
Why do we say l'un and not just un here?
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.
Why aren't there object pronouns before the verbs, like L'équipe le protège?
How would the sentence change if we were talking about two female players?
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.
Can we use the plural les uns and les autres in this exact same structure?