Family Members in French: The Complete Vocabulary List

Family vocabulary is the first thing a French person asks you about, and the first thing you get wrong out loud.

"Vous avez des frères et sœurs ?" arrives in the first two minutes of almost every conversation — with a neighbour, a host family, a colleague at the coffee machine. You have about two seconds to answer, and the answer is made of words you have only ever read. That is the problem. Fils is not "feels". Femme is not "fem". Fille and ville do not rhyme. These are not obscure words you can avoid: they are the eight or nine words you will say most often about your own life.

This page gives you the complete family vocabulary — around 80 words, grouped by the moment you actually need them — and then the ten that break in your mouth, so you can say them and find out where you stand.

The frame: three sentences that carry everything

Before the lists, the sentences you will reuse forever:

• J'ai un frère et deux sœurs. — I have one brother and two sisters.
• Je suis l'aîné / la cadette. — I'm the oldest / the younger one.
• C'est ma sœur, elle s'appelle Claire. — This is my sister, her name is Claire.

One grammar point worth two seconds: the possessive agrees with the noun, not with you. Mon frère, ma sœur, mes parents. And before a vowel sound, feminine ma becomes mon — mon oncle, but also mon amie even though she is a woman. This is a pronunciation rule wearing a grammar costume: French is avoiding two vowels colliding.

Immediate family

Three of these deserve their own warning.

Fils is the single most mispronounced family word in French. The l is silent and the s is not: it rhymes with fisse. Meanwhile fils meaning "threads" (plural of fil) keeps the l and drops the s. Same spelling, opposite silences.

Femme is the famous one: the e is pronounced like an a. Say "fam", never "fem".

Fille and ville are spelled the same way and sound completely different. If that split is new to you, the ILLE rule is worth ten minutes before you go any further.

Going deeper on any single word: mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, child, baby, sibling, family.

Extended family

Cousin / cousine is the most useful minimal pair in this whole article. Cousin ends in a nasal vowel with no n sound at all. Cousine opens it back up: the n is fully pronounced. Say them back to back and you have just drilled the single hardest thing about French vowels — worth the full nasal vowels drill if the two sound the same to you right now. And in both words the single s between vowels is a z: "koo-zan". English speakers reliably hiss it — the s vs z rule covers exactly this.

Note also petit-fils against petits-enfants. Same petit, and the t is silent in one and pronounced in the other. That is liaison doing its job: the t wakes up before a vowel.

In-laws and step-family

French uses one set of words for both. Context decides.

Gendre and bru are the unambiguous words when you need to be clear that you mean marriage and not remarriage. Bru is noticeably old-fashioned; belle-fille is what people say.

Pronunciation note: beau- is a single pure vowel with no glide. English "boh-oo" is the giveaway.

Partners and marital status

Careful with copain: with mon/ma it means boyfriend or girlfriend; without it, un copain is just a mate. The possessive is doing the romantic work.

More angles on the people words: husband, wife, partner, friend, woman, man, person, parent.

Birth order, ages and describing your family

Il a trois ans — not il est. French has years. Getting this wrong is the most audible beginner tell in the whole topic, and it costs nothing to fix.

What people actually call each other

Pépé and mémé sound warmer and more rural than papi and mamie; both are normal. Les vieux is fine among friends and not fine at the dinner table.

The people around the family

When the conversation widens past blood relatives, these are the next words out: neighbour (le voisin / la voisine — another nasal/oral pair), guest (l'invité), host (l'hôte — silent h, circumflex o), colleague (le / la collègue) and boss (le patron / la patronne).

Notice the pattern: voisin / voisine, cousin / cousine, patron / patronne. Masculine nasal, feminine oral with the consonant pronounced. Learn it once here and it transfers to hundreds of words.

Say the ten that break

Reading a vocabulary list changes nothing. These are the ten items on this page that English speakers get wrong out loud, in the order they will cost you. Say each one at normal speed — not slowly, normal — and listen for the specific failure listed.

1. Mon fils a cinq ans. — fils has no l and a live s.
2. Ma fille est à la fac. — fille does not rhyme with ville.
3. C'est ma femme. — "fam". If you hear "fem", start again.
4. Mon cousin et ma cousine. — nasal, then oral. Two clearly different vowels.
5. Mes parents habitent à Lyon. — parents ends in silence; the -ent rule applies. Then link parents habitent into one block.
6. Ma sœur et mon frère. — two French R's in four syllables. If your throat does nothing, see the French R drill.
7. Mon grand-père et ma grand-mère. — silent d, nasal an with no n at the end of it.
8. J'ai deux petits-enfants. — the liaison t must appear.
9. C'est mon oncle. — two nasals and a final cluster with no extra vowel after it.
10. Je suis fille unique. — fille unique links across the two words. If you stop between them, you sound like a list.

Ten sentences is about ninety seconds. The useful part is not saying them — it is finding out which three of the ten are actually wrong, because you cannot hear your own vowels. Simply French scores each sentence as you say it and tells you which sound missed, so ninety seconds of speaking gives you a short list to work on instead of a vague feeling that something is off. The first seven days are free.

Related

• French Everyday Expressions: 60 Phrases Natives Actually Use
• French Food Vocabulary: 120 Words for Every Meal
• French Weather and Nature Vocabulary: 100 Words to Know
• Why French People Switch to English (It's Your Rhythm, Not Your Grammar)
• French Isn't Fast — It's Just Linked