Tom n'a aucune idée de là où nous sommes.

Sentence Discussions French
#1
English Translation

Tom has no idea where we are.

What is the purpose of “là” in this sentence? or even “de”? Isn’t it complete as “aucune idée où nous sommes”? Or is “de” required here?

#2

Hi @paris2020,

“De” is indeed required here.

If I were you, I would think of “de là où” as a unit.

“Là” could be replaced by “l’endroit” in this expression. In fact you might see a number of ways to express this idea:

  • Tom n’a aucune idée de là où nous sommes.

  • Tom n’a aucune idée de l’endroit où nous sommes. = Tom has no idea of the place where we are.

  • Tom n’a aucune idée de l’endroit où nous nous trouvons. = Tom has no idea of the place where we find ourselves.

They all have the same meaning.

Almost :slight_smile:

You could say:

Tom n’a aucune idée d’où nous sommes. // Tom n’a aucune idée d’où nous nous trouvons.

Here, “d’où” is really an abbreviated form of ‘de+où’ (of where). We don’t say “de où” for phonetic reasons.

Now, if the English sentence was: “Tom doesn’t know where we are.”, you would say:
“Tom ne sait pas où nous sommes.”, or more likely if you were speaking: “Tom ne sait où on est.”

So another way to express the “having no idea” idea would be:

“Tom ne sait pas du tout où nous sommes.” = Tom doesn’t know at all where we are.

Here “du tout” just reinforces the fact that Tom doesn’t know.

Also, there is another very common use of “d’où”, and that is:
to ask about provenance/origin or cause:

D’où viens-tu ? (Here you’re actually asking ‘Where from or rather from where’.)

Je ne sais pas d’où vient le problème. (Here you’re really wondering about the source/cause, roughly meaning “I don’t know what’s causing the issue”.)

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#3

Thank you for the detailed explanation. It all makes sense! I think I was getting tripped up because of how some things can be omitted in English. For example, Tom doesn’t have any idea (about) where we are - we would often omit “about”. Thinking of it as a unit sounds like a good idea.

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#4

Right, I understand. I was thinking about it and could hardly think of any equivalent example in French.

I discussed the case of “cannot”, which can be translated as “ne peux pas” or “ne peux” in this example:

But omitting “pas” is quite rare and I think you would mostly find “ne peux” / “ne puis” in older books/texts.

I guess there aren’t too many words that are “optional”, when it comes to written French anyway.
Things are very different with spoken French.

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