Breakdown of La nounou connaît bien la crèche, alors les parents lui font confiance.
Questions & Answers about La nounou connaît bien la crèche, alors les parents lui font confiance.
Why does French use connaît here instead of sait?
French usually uses connaître for being familiar with a person, place, or thing, and savoir for knowing a fact or knowing how to do something.
So:
- connaître la crèche = to know the daycare / be familiar with it
- savoir que... = to know that...
- savoir faire... = to know how to do...
Here, the nanny is familiar with the daycare, so connaît is the natural choice.
What does bien mean in connaît bien?
What exactly does nounou mean?
What does crèche mean in this sentence?
In this context, la crèche means a daycare center or nursery for young children.
This is important because English speakers may know crèche in other meanings, such as a Christmas nativity scene in some contexts. In everyday modern French, crèche very often means a childcare facility for very young children.
Why is it la nounou and la crèche? Are both nouns feminine?
Why does the sentence use alors? What does it do here?
Why is it les parents lui font confiance instead of something more literal like les parents la font confiance?
Because faire confiance à quelqu’un is built with à.
So:
That is why French uses lui, not la.
Compare:
- Ils la voient = They see her
- Ils lui font confiance = They trust her
In the second sentence, her is the object of à, so French uses the indirect object pronoun lui.
How does faire confiance work? Why doesn’t French just use a single verb for trust here?
French often expresses to trust someone with the fixed expression faire confiance à quelqu’un.
Literally, it looks like to make/do trust, but you should learn it as one unit:
- faire confiance à quelqu’un = to trust someone
Examples:
This is one of those cases where French and English organize the idea differently.
Why does lui come before font?
French object pronouns usually come before the conjugated verb.
So:
That word order is normal in French:
- Je le vois.
- Elle nous parle.
- Ils lui font confiance.
So even though English says trust her, French puts the pronoun before the verb phrase: lui font confiance.
Could I say Les parents font confiance à elle?
Normally, no. In standard French, when the object is a pronoun, you usually use lui, not à elle:
- correct: Les parents lui font confiance.
- less natural / usually wrong in this context: Les parents font confiance à elle.
You might hear à elle only for special emphasis or contrast, for example:
- Ils font confiance à elle, pas à lui.
So in an ordinary sentence, lui is the correct form.
Why is the verb font plural?
Can bien go after the noun, or does it have to stay near the verb?
What is the pronunciation of connaît and why does it have the accent î?
Connaît is pronounced roughly like ko-nay.
The î with a circumflex is part of the spelling of this verb form. It comes from the conjugation of connaître:
- je connais
- tu connais
- il/elle connaît
The circumflex often reflects an older historical spelling. For learners, the main thing is to recognize it as the il/elle form of connaître.
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