Family words: name relationships without guessing
A family word describes a relationship, not a person’s appearance. Study the label and a sentence about who is related to whom.
Use the pattern in context
Mother, father, sister, brother and cousin identify different relationships. Older and younger can add relative age when that detail matters. Grandmother and grandfather may be specified as maternal or paternal when you need to distinguish the side of a family. English does not normally require all the relationship distinctions that another language may encode in one word.
Examples to compare
- Relationship: Maya is Rosa’s sister.
- Relative age: Leo is my older brother.
- Specific side: Her maternal grandmother lives nearby.
Limits and useful distinctions
An emoji or a person’s age cannot prove a family relationship. Families differ, and you need not disclose your own family to practise; fictional examples work. The owned deck includes some specific relationship labels. Learn the sense of that label without assuming it describes every English family or naming convention.
Check your understanding
Can a picture of an older woman establish that she is someone’s grandmother?
Reveal the answer and reason
No. The relationship needs context.
Appearance can cue a study label but cannot establish who is related to whom. Read the guide
Try a new example with the same purpose. Check that your version keeps the intended meaning and grammatical pattern.
Shared picture-word reference
These labels resolve the same owned-card provider used by the study decks and picture games. A picture is a cue, not a precise dictionary definition.
- Family
- Father
- Mother
- Parents
- Son
- Daughter
- Older brother
- Younger brother
- Older sister
- Younger sister
- Paternal grandfather
- Paternal grandmother