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acheter à....

acheter à = to buy from

Therefore is my example correct?

J'ai acheté une pomme au vendeur.

If I am going to use pronouns to replace the nouns, is the following sentence correct ?
Je la lui ai achetée.

For learning: French
Base language: English
Category: Language

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Eire_Craig
Jan 20, 2013
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à = at

I find "acheter au vendeur" to be correct ("I bought an apple of the seller" if you will) but equally "acheter du vendeur" ("bought from") suits me.

"je la lui ai acheté" is quite formal. Your sentence mean "I bought it from him" whereas "je l'ai acheté du vendeur" suggested by Zayer get rid of one pronoun, so it's easier to read (even for a native French speaker - we don't particularily like the use of more than one pronoun per sentence.

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on dit j'ai acheté une pomme du vendeur et non pas au vendeur!

when you use pronouns il vaut mieux dire : je l'ai achetée du vendeur.

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zayer
Jan 20, 2013
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I think you would rather use the preposition "à" when you are buying something at an actual shop (something implying it is a building/place), so in cases like "à la boulangerie", "au supermarché". "au kiosque"

I am not really sure about any set rules for these prepositions, but as far as I know when the vendor is a person would most often use "acheter qc. chez/de qn.". You could also "chez" in this case (at least I have heard and read it that way), but I don't think it is used as frequently as "de".

Bonne chance ^_^

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