Whay say "Il l'a fait exprès", not "Il en a fair exprès"?

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Accepted Answer

Hi Deborah,
In fact you will hear both 'il l'a fait exprès' and 'il en a fait exprès' in French meaning  the same thing,
He did it/this on purpose.
The more polite form is to use the definite article:
Il fait toujours l'imbécile ... Il le fait  exprès . (He always plays the fool, he does it /this on purpose)
You can use the 'en'  in spoken French here is an example :
If you are asking to be excused for something you have just done inadvertently, you can say- 
"Pardon, j'en ai pas fait exprès "
But 
 "Pardon, je ne l'ai pas fait exprès" 
is better French for something you didn't do on purpose....
Not sure if this helps but hope it does!

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Sorry that should have been.
Why say "Il l'a fait exprès", not "Il en a fait exprès"?

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Why would you use "en" in this sentence. The pronoun "en" usually replaces a phrase introduced by "de". I don't see anything that could be replaced by "en".
-- Chris (not a native speaker).

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Chris - it's "Faire exprès de" + infinitive = To (do something) on purpose Deborah - this is an interesting question. I think the answer might be that although de + noun can always be replaced by en, de + clause can only be replaced by en in certain cases. It can only be done when there is an equivalent construction with a noun.For example: "j'ai besoin de boire quelque chose" can be expressed as "j'en ai besoin" because you can also say "j'ai besoin de quelque chose".But you cannot say "il a fait exprès de quelque chose".Maybe Aurélie or Cécile can explain this better. It might be useful to have a lesson on this.