She isn’t going to sell them to us

Hello, Please could someone explain why “He isn’t going to sell them to us”- Il na va pas nous les vendre, is correct. But why is  ‘Il na va pas les vendre à nous’ incorrect?

Hi Vin.

The short answer is, it just isn't done that way in French.

You'll find a clear summary of pronoun placement here:

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/object-pronoun-placement/

(note: leaving lawlessfrench pages open tends to eat system resources)

However, you might see something like je lui parle, à elle. Since the 3rd person indirect object pronouns aren't gender specific, one could use the stress pronoun, elle, to clarify that one is talking to ‘her’.

Edit: As discussed in Lesson 5.9, you may (although, not likely) also see a pronoun placed after a preposition after the verb because it's incompatible with the object pronoun placed before the verb. But again, this is going to be a stress pronoun instead of the indirect object pronoun. 

Robert

For all I know, I could just be talking to myself here, but things keep occurring to me.

Theoretically, you could actually see something like,

Il ne va pas te donner à nous (he's not going to give you to us)

But in this case, te and nous are incompatible, and nous is a stress pronoun. In the original example, nous and les are not incompatible, so nous goes in front of the verb.

** I'm relying completely on Lesson 5.9 here since I've never been able to corroborate the notion of incompatible French pronouns with any other source, and it really bugs me. If anyone can provide a source for this other than the lesson material, I'd appreciate knowing it.

Robert

Thank you for your help!