il/elle/on-- what does on mean and how to use it
As far as I understand 'On' means they, you and one when you aren't referring to someone in particular,but rather an idea of someone. Is this right?
I was looking up basic verb conjugation. I am really confused because for some verbs they listed the pronouns for he,she, it as --- il/ elle/ on. But for other verbs they didn't.
Does this mean that for some verbs you can't use 'on'???
Or can I use 'on' with every verb???
Thanks!
2 Comments
You can always use "on" with the appropriate conjugation (the same way you conjugate for il/elle), so people might leave it out of conjugation tables.
In my experience, French sometimes use "on" to mean "we". So colloquially you might hear it spoken more frequently than you'd expect, since English speakers don't use "one" as often. I don't know how duolingo deals with this, but at a basic level you should probably stick to il/elle as much as possible, and as you begin to speak to more French you'll get the feeling for the use of "on".
About possible verbs: If you can't use it in a general sense, you can't use "on". Any time you can use the verb in a general sense, you can use "on". My problem with Duolingo is, that they are random in their translations and fault 'one' at random too.
