On: my favorite pronoun
The French pronoun On means everyone, but no one in particular, and it doesn’t really have a perfect English equivalent.
It uses the third person singular conjunction of verbs (like il & elle).
When you start interacting with French “in the wild” you will see this everywhere.
Here are some valid ways to translate the sentences “on ne sait pas” and “Quand on conduire, on doit faire attention aux enfants qui traverse la route.”
by using ‘one’.
"One does not know”.
“When one drives, one must look out for children crossing the road. ”
This preserves the original meaning but tone wise, using one like this makes the speaker sound like one of /those/ English people that also go around randomly speaking latin and scoffing at the poor. 2/10
Using the passive voice
“It is not known. ”
“Children crossing the road must be watched for when driving. ”
Again the original meaning is preserved, but the original flow of the sentence is somewhat distorted (especially in the second example) and it sounds like a research paper. The register is still too high for every day conversation. 6/10
Using we
“We don’t know. ”
“When we drive we must look out for children crossing the road. ”
It loses a little of the original meaning but it does sound like something a normal human being would say. 7/10.
The general you
“When you drive you must look out for children crossing the road.”
This only works for our second example, but it works very well. 8/10
To sum up
How on is traslated is very contextual!!
I, having studied French for many years from a youngish age, noticed that I use English we almost in the same way as on in some contexts, but idk if this is a bilingual thing, a me thing, or a general English is changing kinda thing but I like it so I’m not stopping 😂.