Learn French: Est-ce que tu connais le jumeau de mon collègue ?

Est-ce que tu connais le jumeau de mon collègue ?

Do you know my colleague's twin?

Breakdown of Est-ce que tu connais le jumeau de mon collègue ?

you (informal singular)

of / from / any (in negative sentences) / about (concerning)

le collègue

the colleague

est-ce que

is it that / do / does (question marker)

Questions & Answers about Est-ce que tu connais le jumeau de mon collègue ?

Why do we use connaître here instead of savoir?

In French, connaître means to be familiar or acquainted with a person, place, or thing. Since you are asking if someone knows a specific person (the twin), you must use connaître. Savoir is reserved for knowing facts or knowing how to do something.

What if the colleague had a twin sister instead of a twin brother?

The feminine form of jumeau (twin brother) is jumelle (twin sister). You would change the sentence to say: Est-ce que tu connais la jumelle de mon collègue ?

Why does the French sentence say le jumeau de mon collègue instead of using an apostrophe-s like in English?

French does not have an equivalent to the English 's to show possession. Instead, you always use the structure 'the [thing] of [person]'. That is why 'my colleague's twin' becomes le jumeau de mon collègue (literally 'the twin of my colleague').

How can we tell if the collègue is a man or a woman here?

The word collègue is spelled the exact same way for both men and women. We know this colleague is male because of the masculine possessive word mon. If the colleague were a woman, it would be ma collègue (because collègue starts with a consonant).