"They would be able to tell us the truth."

Translation: Ils pourraient nous dire la vérité.

[fH6lclhu]

Why can't the sentence be...Ils nous pourraient dire la vérité

[Sitesurf]

The object pronoun is placed before the verb it depends on.

[Ripcurlgirl]

"tell us" (not "would be able us") therefore "nous" precedes "dire".

[dougsfrench]

Is "Ils seraient en mesure de nous dire la vérité" correct? It was shown to be wrong.

[Ripcurlgirl]

Probably because pouvoir as a noun means "power, ability, capacity" and, as a verb, means "be able to, can".

Therefore the conditional form of pouvoir (in this case "pourraient") translates to both "would be able to" and "could".

[Phillip73474]

Any reason why "Elles pourraient nous raconter la vérité" is not accepted? My guess is that "dire la vérité" a fixed expression and that "raconter la vérité" would sound to a native French speaker something like "say the truth" would to an English speaker. I would appreciate if someone more knowledgable could confirm