Breakdown of Un officier de police nous attendait.
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
attendre
to wait / to wait for
la police
the police
l'officier
the officer (m)
Questions & Answers about Un officier de police nous attendait.
Why do we use the article un for a profession here, when the current lesson teaches dropping the article?
Why is it de police and not de la police?
When de links a noun to another noun to describe its general type or category, we usually drop the article for the second noun. Officier de police acts as a fixed compound noun meaning 'police officer'.
The English translation says 'waiting for us', so where is the word for 'for' in the French sentence?
The French verb attendre (to wait) is a direct transitive verb, meaning the concept of 'for' is already built into its meaning. Therefore, nous is a direct object pronoun placed right before the verb, and no extra preposition is needed.
Why is attendait in the imperfect tense rather than the passé composé?
The imperfect is used here to set the scene or describe an ongoing background action in the past. The officer was already in the process of waiting when the speaker arrived, rather than the waiting being a single, completed event.
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