Hello!
I was wondering about this: There is a song "je le vous dirai" - it seems to go against the rules about the order as outlined above. Is there a reason for this? Does it mean something different? Would this just be chalked up to creative freedom to make something sound better because it's a song?
Thanks!
It's a very old song (16th century), and at the time it was written the word order was more flexible. It seems that it's not till the 17th century that the word order starts to be prescribed. There's an argument about it here:
The song has already been translated from old French, so the word order could have been updated, I suppose, but I do think "je le vous dirai" sounds better.
https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=640
Je le vous dirai. -- I will tell it to you.
In English you wouldn't include "it" in the sentence, but in French you frequently do, as a reference to what you want to tell, which would normally have been mentioned before.
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