FRENCH: l'

[orpheus_samhain]

Could you please tell me what l' mean in this sentence?

Mais l'on mesurerait mal la << matérialité >> de certaines images de l'eau, la << densité >> de certains fantômes, si l'on avait pas d'abord étudié les formes irisées, tout en surface.

from L'eau et les rêves by Gaston Bachelard

Comments

[asher63]

It's the contracted definite article, 'le'. French uses the definite article much more than English does; 'l'on' just means "one" (i.e. a person generically).

[suzycat]

It is a shortened version of le or la, ie the, he/she or it. It takes that apostrophe because the vowels run together, so l'on rather than le on. You would see l'autre, l'oef etc when it is a definite article, but also used in cases like il l'a fait (he did it)

I *think* it's "the one" in this case but my French is very very very rusty and if it's not, I don't know what the "it" is to which it would be referring.

[spamsink]

In French, "on" is a pronoun, they don't take articles.

[suzycat]

To what then does the le refer?

[spamsink]

To nothing. It's just for ease of pronunciation and for style. An indefinite pronoun is an indefinite pronoun, even with the (historical) definite article.

[novy_chitatel]

But one would wrongly measure the << materiality>> of certain images of water, the density of >>some phantoms <<, if one had not first studied the iridescent forms, the entire surface.

[spamsink]

Looks epenthetic, as there is a vowel sound before "on" in both cases.

[orpheus_samhain]

http://french.about.com/library/pronunciation/bl-lon.htm need-to-smile gave this explanation

[suzycat]

That explains a lot, thank you. It was never explained to me in school 30 years ago.

[asher63]

Ah, that's helpful. We got some of this in high school French, but needless to say the explanation for avoiding "qu'on" was not given. Delicate young ears and all.

[iddewes]

Yes thanks for that link! I always just accepted the l'on thing and never actually knew why it was like that.