How to use these words

What does "il s'agit " means? Does it means "it is about"

And "On disait....." does it means " one would say "?

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 3, 2011 at 5:40pm

Il s'agit de... basically means things like "What is at stake is...", "The matter that concerns us/them/him is...", "The matter at hand/What is being talked about is...", "What matters is...", "What we need to do is...", "The person/matter in question is..." etc. There's really a whole variety of uses and translations, but that's the idea. Note that it's an impersonal construction: the il doesn't actually refer to anything strictly speaking.

As for On disait..., I imagine it's being used to mean something like "What was reckoned is that...", "General opinion was that..." etc, but I'd need to see the whole sentence/context to give a clearer idea.