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What is the capital of Tunisia?

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What is the capital of Tunisia?

Would “on est les misérables” be grammatical and idiomatic?

Yes, on est les misérables is perfectly grammatical in spoken French where on has almost completely superseded nous as a subject.

Speaking about les misérables, Victor Hugo, Les Misérables author who isn’t especially known to use “improper French”, “low French” or for being a football fan (Sorry Celebs interviewerédricVanRompay, I couldn’t resist 😉 ) wrote these verses in his Alsace et Lorraine poem 1872, Toute la Lyre:


Se ruant sur l’auguste et sombre genre humain.
On est les chefs de l’ombre et l’on a dans la main
Les rênes des chevaux du sépulcre, on excite

On gonfle le flot noir des légions sinistres
On est les dieux ayant les démons pour ministres ;

However, in your sentence les misérables looks odd.

Perhaps did you want to say:

on est misérables
on est des miséreux
on est dans la misère

?

In any case, a famous phrase using the on est les pattern is On est les champions.

A written, formal document will likely use nous sommes les … though.

The use of on in place of nous is considered as informal [1],
but in certain structures in just sounds weird,
and “On est les […]” is one of them.
“On est les misérables” will not sound “incorrect” but just… “low French”.

@jiliagre mentions “On est les champions” which is indeed a thing,
but it comes from a very specific context, namely football fans,
which is not considered as a reference for proper language.
Actually the fact that it “sounds a bit weird” might have help it becomes popular.

However it is interesting to note that “On est + [adjective]” is not considered as improper.

[1] There are other uses of on which are very formal: “On voit clairement que …”, “On retiendra que…”

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?