Breakdown of Nous faisons attention à l'emballage et nous choisissons des produits avec moins de papier.
Questions & Answers about Nous faisons attention à l'emballage et nous choisissons des produits avec moins de papier.
Why does the sentence use faire attention à instead of a single verb?
Because faire attention à is a very common French expression meaning to pay attention to, to be careful about, or to watch out for.
So:
- Nous faisons attention à l'emballage = We pay attention to the packaging
- Literally, it is something like We make attention to the packaging, but you should learn it as a fixed expression, not word for word.
This is very natural everyday French.
Why is it faisons?
Faisons is the nous form of the verb faire in the present tense.
The verb faire is irregular:
- je fais
- tu fais
- il / elle fait
- nous faisons
- vous faites
- ils / elles font
So nous faisons attention means we pay attention or we are paying attention, depending on context.
Why do we say à l'emballage?
The expression faire attention normally takes à before the thing you are paying attention to:
- faire attention à quelque chose = to pay attention to something
Here, the noun is emballage.
Because emballage begins with a vowel sound, à + le/la becomes à l':
- à l'emballage
So this means to the packaging or more naturally to packaging.
What does l' stand for in l'emballage?
Why is emballage singular and not plural?
In this sentence, l'emballage refers to packaging in general as a concept, not to several separate packages.
French often uses the singular for this kind of general idea:
- l'emballage = packaging
- le plastique = plastic
- le papier = paper
So à l'emballage means to the packaging / to packaging in general, not necessarily to one package.
Why is nous repeated before choisissons?
French often repeats the subject pronoun before each verb:
- Nous faisons attention à l'emballage et nous choisissons...
This is completely normal and natural.
You could also say:
- Nous faisons attention à l'emballage et choisissons des produits...
But repeating nous sounds clearer and more standard, especially in careful written French.
Why is it choisissons?
Choisissons is the nous form of choisir in the present tense.
Choisir is a regular -ir verb of the type that adds -iss- in the plural forms:
- je choisis
- tu choisis
- il / elle choisit
- nous choisissons
- vous choisissez
- ils / elles choisissent
So nous choisissons means we choose.
Why does choisir become choisissons with -iss-?
Why is it des produits and not les produits?
Why is it avec moins de papier and not avec moins du papier?
Why is papier singular?
What tense is used in this sentence?
Could French speakers also say on instead of nous here?
Is avec moins de papier the most natural way to say with less paper?
Yes, it is very natural.
It means the products have less paper in their packaging or use less paper overall. French often leaves that kind of detail understood from context.
You could make it more explicit, for example:
- des produits avec moins d'emballage
- des produits qui utilisent moins de papier
- des produits avec moins de papier dans l'emballage
But the original sentence is concise and natural.
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