Agreeing past participle with "on":

Umi O.C1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

Agreeing past participle with "on":

Asked 7 years ago
AurélieNative French expert teacher in Kwiziq
Bonjour Umi ! Did you have a question regarding this lesson ?
Umi O.C1Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor
Bonjour Aurélie, I am sorry for not completing my question. Somehow I lost the page where I was writing my question regarding the usage of "ON." So my question is: "As Men, we always went off to explore new horizons" in the example for "on", why is it treated as a singular as indicated on the page for the lesson? "En tant qu'Hommes, on est toujours allé à la découverte de nouveaux horizons." Since "Men" is a plural, I thought that we needed to change the past participle accordingly. I would like to get an explanation to clarify my confusion, please. Merci beaucoup, umi
AurélieNative French expert teacher in Kwiziq
Bonjour Umi ! The distinction is whether "on" refers to "we" - i.e. the speaker and other people he's with - or to a broader, more abstract group - i.e. "people in general". Here we used the generic "Men" referring to Humanity in general, hence the capital letter, so it belongs to the second case. I hope that's helpful! À bientôt !.

Agreeing past participle with "on":

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