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.