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« ce que l'on aime » : where does this l' come from?

Hello, I've found a french proverb : it says,

« Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a.»

and it means "If you don't have what you love, you have to love what you have." (from en.wikiquote).

I wonder what this « l'» means and if

« Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on aime, il fait aimer ce qu'on a. »

makes sense. Thank you !

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In terms of meaning, they're essentially equivalent[*]. The difference is more one of style: l'on is a more literary variant.

If an author decides to use l'on at all, they'll generally use it after a vowel, to avoid two different vowels next to one another. Hence in your example, on is used in the first instance (because the final -d of quand would be pronounced in this case) and l'on in the second.

[*] On the other hand, because it is a feature of literary language, l'on would generally mean "one in general" rather than "we", because in a literary style, nous would instead be used to mean "we".

Thank you very much for your clear explanation.

Additionally, can I think of this l' as a definite article? (I'm just curious...)

There's little syntactic reason to do so-- it's certainly not behaving like anything else that you'd call a definite article.

I'd really just think of "l'on" as a fixed alternative to "on" and leave it at that.

Thank you!

Here is a long shot "syntactical"  reason for the "l":  The article lends emphasis to the verb. Here is a translation that makes sense to me: If you can't have what you  love, then you have to love what you DO (or can) have.

Jes' guessin'.

I think you're reading too much into it!

It's really just a historical relic, and these days the reason for using it is essentially euphony (that's a fancy way of saying when an author thinks it "sounds better"). Typically, l'on is used where on alone would leave two vowels next to each other -- it's a way of "breaking up the vowels", if you like. But it's entirely optional and a matter of style. In speech, it would sound odd/pretentious.

Historically, l'on (spelt l'en in some earlier texts) was used more generally, and what has apparently happened is that speaker gradually preferred the form on, the archaic form is preserved in a few cases. You'll also find variation, e.g. some authors will use l'on at the beginning of a sentence (when there's obviously no argument to do so in terms of "breaking up vowels"), whereas others wouldn't.

But of course, what "sounds better" is rather subjective and dependent on the state of the language at a given time.

And in any case, there are squillions of places in French where two vowels will happen to fall next to one another-- and indeed words which have two vowels next to one another inside the word. It's not clear why there's a need to go on a crusade against this phenomenon in this specific instance...

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