I can’t emphasize enough the importance of mastering the French pronoun en. Simply put, if you claim to speak French well, you should be using en every day.

As I pointed out in my preceding post on French idioms with en, there are rather sophisticated uses of en that you should be aware of. But do remember that the most common and important use of en is to refer to something that was mentioned earlier in the conversation. This is what you have to master before attempting complicated constructions.

In this post I want to share two great examples of en that should be sources of inspiration.

An example of pronoun EN in spoken French

In the first example taken from an interview I heard on the radio, the leader of an opposition political party is asked if his party will vote in favour of the budget proposed by the government:

– Allez-vous appuyer le budget du gouvernement ?
– Il n’en est pas question ! (Absolutely not !)

(By the way, English-speakers, please note that the French pronunciation of budget is very different from the English version.)

The printed word does not render how forcefully Il n’en est pas question was articulated.

What is en refering to here ? Interestingly, it refers to the whole preceding question. One way of understanding how en works is to try to paraphrase the sentence without it. In this case, we would have:

Il n’est pas question d’appuyer le budget du gouvernement !

All this d’appuyer le budget du gouvernement is contained in en. Isn’t that great? That’s the beauty of en. As a matter of fact, you should put Il n’en est pas question on a flashcard and make sure you use it daily.

An example of pronoun en in formal written French

Here is an example of en in formal and rather intimidating administrative French. On the wall of the Montreal subway or métro cars, you can read the following sign about using the emergency brake :

Le frein d’urgence doit être utilisé seulement lorsque la situation présente un danger de vie ou de mort. Quiconque en fait un usage non justifié est passible d’une amende allant jusqu’à 500 $ plus les frais.

The emergency brake is to be used only in life-threatening situations. Unjustified use will incur a fine of up to $500 plus costs.

In “Quiconque en fait un usage non justifié… “, the en refers, of course, to le frein d’urgence If we were to rewrite that sentence without en, it would become :

Quiconque fait un usage non justifié du frein d’urgence est passible d’une amende allant jusqu’à 500 $ plus les frais.

This is perfectly good French, but by using en we can make the whole thing shorter. This is the power of en.

On the other hand, in English the reader has to make the connection mentally with “the emergency brake.”

Stanley Aléong is a polyglot, author, musician, language coach in French, English and Spanish, language workshop facilitator and organizer of French-English conversation meetups in Montreal, Canada. He likes to share his passion for languages and believes that anybody can learn to speak a foreign language well with the right methods and tools. He has also invented a cool visual learning tool called the Essential French Wall Chart Calendar. Reach him at info@langcal.com.