Translation of some sentences containing the pronoun "en"

[Curt Jugg]

Hi. Could anyone come up with translations of the following sentences, please?

1) Il en était ainsi.

2) Il en était autrement.

3) Il y en avait encore.

4) Il y en aurait ensuite.

Thanks in advance.

[Neil Coffey]

In (1) and (2), what you have is essentially a set expression. The meaning of (1) is "This is how things were", "Things were like this", "It was thus", "This was the state of affairs" etc. In other words, there's not really much sense in breaking it down into meanings of each individual word. Similarly in (2), the sense is "Things were different", "There was a different state of affairs", "That wasn't how things were" etc. I suppose if you really wanted to break it down, you could say en carries the sense of "in the world", "in the state of the universe" (compare a sentence such as regarde où j'en suis = "look at where I've got to (in life/in this book I'm reading)".)

In (3) and (4), on the other hand, en takes on more of a literal meaning of "of it", "of them". So (3) would generally mean something like "There was more (of it)", "There were more (of them)", though it could depend a bit on the context. And (4) would similarly mean something like "There would then be more (of it/them)", "More (of it/them/the same) would follow" etc.

Obviously in all cases, picking a good English translation depends on the exact context and style, but this gives you the essential idea of the meaning.

[Curt Jugg]

Thank you very much for your reply. It's very helpful.