French describes eyes and hair with avoir: Il a les yeux bleus, Elle a les cheveux longs — literally "he has the eyes blue". The pattern reuses your body words, your colors and your avoir forms in one construction you will hear in every French description of a person.
| French | English | Say it |
|---|---|---|
| Il a les yeux bleus. | He has blue eyes. | ee-lah lay zyuh BLUH |
| Elle a les yeux verts. | She has green eyes. | eh-lah lay zyuh VEHR |
| J’ai les cheveux bruns.brun is the usual word for brown hair | I have brown hair. | zhay lay shuh-vuh BRUH(n) |
| les cheveux longs | long hair | lay shuh-vuh LOH(n) |
| les cheveux courts | short hair | lay shuh-vuh KOOR |
Respellings follow the course’s say-it key; the stressed syllable is in capitals. Print this lesson’s flashcards (PDF) — the words on the front, the English and respelling on the back.
Each word is read twice — say it back in the gap. Computer-generated voice; credits on the course page.
Il/Elle a + les + body word + describing word. The color sits last, exactly where Lesson 14 put it. Build your own line first: J’ai les yeux…, j’ai les cheveux… — truthfully.
Add these to Lesson 20 and a portrait grows to five sentences: who, what they are like, age, eyes, hair. That is genuinely how French children describe people at school.
This free course is the reading half. The writing half — write-in lessons, daily practice pages with built-in review, self-checks and a full answer key — is the companion workbook series, The French Ladder: one workbook per module, fifteen in all, released band by band with the Basic band (Modules 1–5) first.
Turn this lesson’s words into flashcards, then space your reviews — the two habits the research behind our study guides backs hardest.
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