Breakdown of Nous avons enfin acheté un aspirateur parce que le sol était toujours plein de poussière.
Questions & Answers about Nous avons enfin acheté un aspirateur parce que le sol était toujours plein de poussière.
The passé composé (nous avons acheté) is used for one completed action in the past.
- Nous avons acheté un aspirateur = We bought / have bought a vacuum cleaner (at some specific time in the past).
- Using the present (nous achetons) would mean we are buying / we buy, which doesn’t match the idea of a past decision that has already been carried out.
So French uses the passé composé here for the same reason English uses a past tense: the purchase is a completed event.
In compound tenses like the passé composé, many short adverbs (like enfin, souvent, déjà, toujours) usually go between the auxiliary and the past participle:
- Nous avons enfin acheté un aspirateur.
Other positions are possible, but they sound a bit different:
- Enfin, nous avons acheté un aspirateur.
Emphasis on finally as a comment on the whole sentence. - Nous avons acheté un aspirateur, enfin.
More colloquial, like adding at last or you know, finally at the end.
The most neutral place in this sentence is the one you see: between avoir and acheté.
Here, enfin means roughly “finally / at last”, expressing relief after waiting a long time or after delaying something:
- Nous avons enfin acheté un aspirateur = We finally (at last) bought a vacuum cleaner.
Depending on the context, enfin can also mean things like:
- Well / anyway (as a discourse marker)
- In short
But in this sentence it clearly has the time + relief sense: we should have done this earlier; we finally did it.
French uses un here because we’re talking about a vacuum cleaner in general, not a specific one already known:
- Nous avons enfin acheté un aspirateur
= We finally bought a (some) vacuum cleaner.
If you said:
- Nous avons enfin acheté l’aspirateur.
that would suggest a particular vacuum cleaner that both speaker and listener already know about (for example, the one they had been discussing before in detail).
So:
- un aspirateur = a vacuum cleaner (non-specific, new in the conversation)
- l’aspirateur = the vacuum cleaner (known / already identified in the context)
All three can often be translated as because, but:
- parce que: the most neutral and common way to say because.
- car: more formal / written, often used in explanations, arguments, or narration; sounds a bit literary or old-fashioned in everyday speech.
- puisque: means since / given that; the reason is usually assumed to be obvious or already known to the listener.
In this everyday-style sentence, parce que is the natural, neutral choice:
- Nous avons enfin acheté un aspirateur parce que le sol était toujours plein de poussière.
You could say car in writing, but puisque would slightly change the nuance to “since, as you know, the floor was always full of dust”.
All are related to the floor, but they aren’t interchangeable:
le sol
General word for the ground / the floor surface. Works well for both inside and outside.
Here it just means the floor (of the room / apartment, etc.).par terre
Literally “on the ground/floor.” It describes location rather than the surface itself:- Il y a de la poussière par terre. = There is dust on the floor.
le plancher
More specifically the wooden floor / floorboards, or a structural floor level.
In your sentence, we’re talking about the surface of the floor being dusty, so le sol is the natural, neutral word.
The imparfait (était) describes:
- a continuing situation in the past
- a repeated / habitual state
- background information
Here, le sol était toujours plein de poussière means the floor was habitually / generally full of dust over a period of time, not just once.
If you used the passé composé (a été), it would sound more like a specific completed event:
- Le sol a été plein de poussière.
= The floor was (got) full of dust at some moment (wrong nuance here).
So était (imparfait) fits because it describes an ongoing, repeated state that provides the reason for buying the vacuum cleaner.
In this sentence, toujours clearly means “always”:
- Le sol était toujours plein de poussière.
= The floor was always full of dust.
Toujours can mean “always” or “still”, but context decides:
- Il est toujours en retard.
= He is always late. - Il est toujours là.
= He is still there.
Because we’re explaining why they bought a vacuum cleaner and talking about a habitual state, the “always” meaning is the natural one here.
The structure plein de + noun usually takes bare de, without an article:
- plein de poussière = full of dust
- plein d’eau = full of water
- plein de monde (informal) = packed with people
So you normally don’t say:
- plein de la poussière
- plein de la nourriture, etc.
Instead, use the fixed pattern plein de + noun, which expresses the idea full of / covered with / filled with that thing in general.
Yes, plein agrees in gender and number with the noun it describes:
- le sol → masculine singular → plein
- la table → feminine singular → pleine
- les sols → masculine plural → pleins
- les tables → feminine plural → pleines
In your sentence:
- le sol était toujours plein de poussière.
plein matches le sol (masculine singular), so plein is correct, not pleine.
The standard, natural position is:
- Le sol était toujours plein de poussière.
You might hear or see:
- Le sol était plein de poussière, toujours. (very colloquial / emphatic)
- Toujours, le sol était plein de poussière. (unusual; very marked, almost poetic or rhetorical)
But for normal speech and writing, toujours usually goes:
- after the verb (être here) and
- before the adjective or phrase it modifies:
→ était toujours plein de poussière is the most idiomatic word order.
You could, but the meaning becomes less specific.
- sale = dirty (could be dust, mud, stains, crumbs, anything)
- plein de poussière = full of dust / very dusty (specifically dust)
So:
- Le sol était toujours sale.
= The floor was always dirty (in some way). - Le sol était toujours plein de poussière.
= The floor was always full of dust (specifically dusty).
The original sentence emphasizes dust as the main problem, which makes vacuuming especially relevant.
Grammatically:
- nous avons and on a both mean we have (here: we bought).
The difference is in register:
- nous = more formal / standard, often used in writing, careful speech, or when speaking more “correctly”.
- on in spoken French almost always means we in everyday conversation and is very common.
So in everyday speech, many people would actually say:
- On a enfin acheté un aspirateur.
The sentence with nous avons is perfectly correct and just slightly more neutral or formal.