Asking About Family in French

Sentence Builder: Asking About Children and Family

Vous avez des enfants?
Do you have any children?

Je n’ai pas d’enfants
I have no children

J’ai…
I have		un fils
a son

deux fils
two sons

une fille
a daughter

deux filles
two daughters

deux fils et une fille
two sons and a daughter

Vous avez des frères ou des sœurs?
Do you have any brothers or sisters?

J’ai…
I have		un frère
one brother

deux sœurs
two sisters

trois frères
three brothers

quatre sœurs
four sisters

Asking a Question in French: The Simple Method

In the first example, we see how to ask ‘Do you have any children?’

In French, Vous avez des enfants?

This literally means ‘You have (some) children.’

So this could be a statement, but you can make a statement a question in French by raising the pitch of your voice at the end of the sentence.

‘I have’ and ‘I do not have’

In French, ‘I have’ is j’ai.

To make it a negative statement with ‘not’ it becomes je n’ai pas.

You don’t have to worry about the English word ‘do,’ this is a quirk of English and isn’t present in the French equivalent.

So, ‘I have,’ or ‘I do have’ are all simply translated to j’ai in French.

‘I don’t have,’ or ‘I do not have’ are both simply je n’ai pas in French.

‘To Have’ in French

In these examples, we have used two phrases, j’ai and vous avez, which both include parts of a type of word that we call a verb (ai and avez). The ‘j‘ is a shortened version of the French word for ‘I,’ which in its full form would be je. When used before a vowel, this becomes j’. Vous is the French for ‘you.’

Verbs are words that describe an action, in this case the idea of ‘having.’

Verbs are often used with words such as ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘we,’ or ‘they.’

For example, you can say ‘I have,’ ‘you have,’ ‘he has,’ ‘we have’ or ‘they have’ in English. Notice that in English, ‘have’ sometimes becomes ‘has,’ in the same way that j’ai has become vous avez.

Making Plurals in French

You’ll see here that we have some examples of plural nouns. In other words, we have moved from talking about one brother to two, three or four brothers. Notice how in English, if we’re talking about more than one of something, we can add an ‘-s’ to show that.

Le frère has become des frères and le sœur has become des sœurs, ‘some brothers’ and ‘some sisters.’

A lot of the time, making plurals in French is the same as in English, we add an ‘-s.’ Listen to the video again and you’ll notice that the ‘-s’ in French is not always pronounced, it’s appeared only in the spelling.

Just like in English, there are lots of exceptions to this rule, which you can learn about in our lesson on French plurals. Otherwise, we’ll point them out as we go!

Meanwhile, the question uses the word des, so we see des sœurs, ‘some sisters,’ for example in the phrase Vous avez des frères ou des sœurs?‘ So, the French phrase literally reads: ‘You have some brothers or some sisters?’ You don’t have to worry about English words like ‘do’ or ‘any,’ simply follow the French constructions.

Go Deeper

If you want to expand your knowledge about any topics here, explore the related materials below.