How to Talk About Your Family in English (Useful Phrases & Adjectives)

So Rick, tell me about your family. My family is big. They eat food. And my father is my mother's husband and my mom is married to my father. What? I really need to learn how to talk about my family in English. Yeah, you do. Now, first things first, let's talk about family size. If you want to say how big or how small your family is, or how many members there are in your family, you can use these sentences. I come from a family. I come from a big family. I come from a small family. If you want to talk about the number of brothers or sisters you have, what is brother and sister together? Sibling. How many siblings do you have? You can say, I have siblings. I have three siblings. I have four siblings. Or if you want to clearly mention the number of members of your family, you can use this, there are of us in my family. There are four of us in my family. There are five of us in my family. Now let's talk about birth order. Among the siblings in a family, whoever was born first is called firstborn or eldest, the sibling who was in the middle is called middle child, whoever was last is called youngest. And if you don't have any siblings, you are an only child. And to talk about your birth order, use this sentence. I'm the, in my family. I'm the firstborn in my family. I'm the eldest in my family. I'm the middle child in my family. I'm the youngest in my family. I'm an only child in my family. Another important thing when you want to talk about your family is to describe personalities. And to describe personalities, you need to know some very common personality adjectives. So let's learn a few very common ones. Supportive, which means somebody who helps you or who encourages you. Caring, somebody who shows love and kindness. Hardworking, somebody who works a lot and doesn't give up. Reliable, you can trust this person. Strict, somebody who wants rules, somebody who's not flexible. Easygoing, somebody who's not strict. This is the exact opposite of strict. A person who's relaxed and not stressed and does not need any rules. You can say someone's funny if they make you laugh. And if somebody has good ideas, you can say they are creative. If they like to give and to share, they are generous. And a person who doesn't change their mind, stubborn. Okay. Now, how can I use personality adjectives to describe the members of my family? There are two ways. One of them is this family member to be verb adjective. My father is supportive. My sisters are funny. My mother is strict. Another way you can use personality adjectives is to use this formula. I have a adjective family member. I have a supportive father. I have funny sisters. I have a strict mother. Now let's talk about some collocations that you can use to talk about your family. Describe your family in a more advanced way. Do you know what a close knit family is? It's a family where people are very close. They support each other and they are very close to each other. A close knit family. We're a close knit family. We support each other. Another interesting collocation to talk about family members or in general relationships between people. Get along with somebody. It means to have a good, friendly relationship with somebody. I get along well with my brothers, which means I have a good relationship with my brothers. If you want to say that you agree with someone in your family or you have similar opinions, you can use this idiom. See eye to eye with someone. It basically means to agree with someone or to have similar opinions. You can also use it in a negative way. I don't always see eye to eye with my parents. It means we often don't have the same opinions. Now, this one is very common to have a good relationship with someone, which means to respect each other, to have a positive relationship. I have a good relationship with my cousins. And finally, very useful, very useful because not everything is so positive. It's so beautiful in families. There are some ugly things. Fall out with someone. It means to argue and to fight with someone and stop being friendly for a while. Not for a very long time, hopefully, but for a short period of time. You have a fight and you stop talking to each other. I sometimes fall out with my sisters, but we make up quickly. So you fall out means you have an argument and you don't talk to each other for a short period of time, hopefully, and to make up means to go and apologize and then to make the relationship good again. Now it is time to put them all together. And let me ask my friend Rick to talk about his family. Hey, Rick, tell us about your family. There are five people in my family. My parents, my two sisters and me, we are a really close knit family and we spend a lot of time together. My dad is hardworking and reliable. He always keeps his promises. My mom is caring and generous, especially with her time. I get along really well with my older sister, but I don't always see eye to eye with my younger one. She's a bit stubborn. Still, I feel lucky because family means a lot to me. Guys, if you want to download the summary of this lesson in a PDF file, all of the phrases that we have just covered together, you can simply do it for free by clicking on the link above my head and on my website, you can download it. Go ahead and do it. I highly recommend this. It's an excellent material to review this lesson later. Lovely. Now it is your turn. Go to the comment section of this video and tell me about your family. It's your homework, so go ahead and do it now. See ya.