in my old book "à bient?t 1, Franz?sisch für Erwachsene, page 116" I read the following sentence: "Les Allemands vont beaucoup à l’étranger, surtout en Espagne, c'est là qu'on en voit le plus." Why do we use "en" here and not "les" as in: "c'est là qu'on les (les for "les Allemands") voit le plus." Is it because one uses "le plus d'Allemands" so with the preposition "de" one needs to use en. So one can say: "c'est là qu'on les voit le plus fréquemment" or "c'est là qu'on en voit le plus." Is this correct? Thank you!
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c'est là qu'on en voit le plus = "you see most of them there", them = Germans going abroad. Note that c'est là qu'on les voit le plus is both grammatical and possible.– François JurainCommented 10 hours ago
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1 Answer
Good thought, but I wouldn't say that fréquemment changes which pronoun to use. The "(quantité) d'Allemands" is implicit without naming the quantity.
Les is also acceptable but suggests that there's some particular set of Allemands you're likely to see, like you keep running into this group or something.
En suggests that you see any Allemands, whether these ones, those ones, or even just an individual one from time to time.
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Ah... And at the beginning of the sentence, one uses "LES Allemands" because... this is the way it is? In this case LES has nothing to do with a particular group of Germans, but in the second part of the sentence, LES would indicate - as you pointed out - a particular group? Commented 16 hours ago
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2@user33704 Exactly so; the definite article "les" oddly enough designates Germans in general, applying the predicate to the whole class of them, while the direct object pronoun "les" designates a particular group (or the entire class, but all of Germany can't be expected to turn up in Spain).– Luke Sawczak ♦Commented 16 hours ago
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If beg to differ. I understand c'est là qu'on en voit le plus as "it's mostly there that you see them" and c'est là qu'on les voit le plus as "it's there that they are the most visible". Commented 1 hour ago