Je lis un livre de mon grand-père.

I read a book from my grandfather.

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

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).