Language/French/Grammar/Use-of-the-neutral-pronoun-le

Use of the neutral pronoun le

le, in addition to its function as a third person singular pronoun referring to masculine nouns, may also have a 'neutral' function when it refers to states, general ideas or whole propositions:

After mastering this lesson, these related pages might interest you: Possessive determiners, Omission of the article, Indirect object pronouns used in possessive constructions with body parts & When Use à or a.

Examples

• Pour que nous vous remboursions vos frais de déplacement, il faut présenter des justificatifs, si vous le pouvez (le refers to 'justifying the expenditure')

For us to be able to pay your travelling expenses, you must prove you have spent the money, if you can

• Vous n'êtes plus président, je le sais (le refers to 'no longer being the president')

You are no longer the president, I know

• Je le répète: tu ne travailles pas assez (le refers to 'you're not doing enough work')

I'll say it again: you're not doing enough work

Other Lessons

• se as an alternative to an English passive
• Easy way of generating the Future and Conditional
• Categories of Nouns in French
• Nouns with irregular plurals
• Intransitive verbs and auxiliary “être”
• Polite Form
• Subject verb agreement — Verb agreement with collective noun subjects
• Comparative and superlative forms of adverbs
• Adverbs ending in —ment derived from words no longer in the language
• Pronouns
• Use of en
• Masculine Nouns Ending in ée
• Easy way of generating the imperative mood
• Plural of words in Al
• How to tell the time