Breakdown of Je lis un livre de mon grand-père.
je
I
mon
my
le grand-père
the grandfather
lire
to read
le livre
the book
de
from
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Questions & Answers about Je lis un livre de mon grand-père.
Why is it un livre and not le livre?
In French, un is an indefinite article, meaning a in English. It implies that it’s one particular book out of many possible books. By contrast, le (the definite article) would imply a specific book that both speaker and listener know about. Since the speaker is not designating a particular, well-known book by their grandfather, they use un.
Why do we say de mon grand-père and not du mon grand-père?
In this construction, de is used to indicate possession or origin, meaning from or by someone. It literally conveys a book of my grandfather. We don’t combine de and mon into du here because du would be the contraction of de + le. But since we have a possessive adjective (mon), there’s no contraction; it stays as de mon.
How is lire conjugated, and why does it appear as lis here?
Lire is an irregular verb in French meaning to read. Its present-tense conjugations are:
• Je lis
• Tu lis
• Il/Elle/On lit
• Nous lisons
• Vous lisez
• Ils/Elles lisent
We use lis in the sentence because the subject is je (I), so we pick the je form of lire in the present tense.
Why does grand-père have a hyphen?
In French, many compound nouns—especially family terms like grand-père (grandfather) and grand-mère (grandmother)—are written with a hyphen. This is the standard spelling rule.
Does grand-père have any specific pronunciation rules?
Yes, there are a couple of points:
• The final d in grand is generally silent.
• père is pronounced somewhat like pair in English, but with a slightly different vowel sound (moving the tongue forward and opening the mouth slightly).