In the sentence "il suffit d’observer ce que font les autres et les imiter," why have the verb (font) and the subject (les autres) swapped places? Shouldn't it be "il suffit d’observer ce que les autres font et les imiter"?
The sentence is taken from this text: "https://www.lawlessfrench.com/listening/bise-a-la-francaise/"
Thank you in advance.
Anisa,
as this is from Laura Lawless site, it is probably best to post your question there if this doesn’t answer your question fully.
The sentence as written is correct and shows optional ( and more formal) stylistic inversion following a relative pronoun. Your alternative sentence is fine too.
See link back to Laura’s site for discussion of this, and inversion more generally.
https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/inversion-with-nouns/
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