Je peux t'en dire la raison en long et en large.

Sentence Discussions French
#1
English Translation

I can tell you the reason at full length.

Original sentence: Je peux t’en dire la raison en long et en large.

I am getting feedback from someone who is mostly good with French that it is not usual / sounds off to use “en“ with dire. Any other opinions on that?

Thanks in advance.

#2

It’s perfecltly fine, works the same was as “Je peux t’en donner la raison”.
Nowadays people might ommit the en and just say “Je peux te dire la raison”, but I’d be willing to bet it’s more gramatically correct to use en, and at least to me it sounds better
If you search for inurl:"https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/" "en dire la raison" on google you’ll find plenty of examples from classical texts

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#3

Thanks. I appreciate the sources as well so I know where to look next time.

#4

You may also hear/see: “en long, en large et en travers”, which basically means the same thing.

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