break it down

Question

could someone explain for me like broken down what is the source of this so my brain can understand lol like ok im sorry this is hard to explain but for example "je" = i, "m'" = iop, "to me", "apelle"= je form of s'apeller. so like, what does each thing, "il," "y," and "a" mean? i think il is 3rd person singular so it works as "it?" and idk about the y and the "a" is 3rd person singular of avoir, "has"?

Accepted Answer

You can go crazy trying to break everything down into its atomic constituents. Just take it as il y a -- there is.

Answer

Agree with Chris that sometimes it is not helpful to break things down in that way. There is no direct comparison to English in that phrase. "Il y a un chien" = "there is a dog" pure and simple which makes much more sense than something like "it has a dog there" which might be a possible (but not useful) literal translation as "y" can be a pronoun replacing a place. Be careful though, because "il y a" can also mean "ago" so "il y a 3 ans" means "3 years ago" (and not "there are 3 years" which wouldn't make sense in English) so context is everything.