Possessive adjectives are used to show ownership. In English they are: my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their.
‘My car’ ‘Your house’
If you’re new to grammar, be careful not to confuse possessive adjectives with the similar but grammatically different possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, yours, theirs.
Possessive adjectives describe a noun, as above, ‘My car’ ‘Your house’.
Possessive pronouns substitute for a noun
‘That car is mine.’ ‘Is this house yours?’
‘That’s mine.’ ‘Is it yours?’
Turning to Spanish now, we have:
‘Mi coche’ (my car) ‘T’u casa (your house)
Just as in English, the possessive adjectives come before the noun (though often in Spanish and other Latin-origin languages adjectives come after nouns.)
There are six possessive adjectives. Careful, though! Unlike in English, Spanish possessive adjectives they have singular and plural forms.
In English we don’t say ‘My window’ and ‘Mys windows’. But that’s how it works in Spanish
mi(s) = my
‘Mi ventana’ ‘Mis ventanas’ (‘My window’ ‘Mys windows’)
tu(s) = your (familiar)
‘Tu mano’ ‘Tus manos’ (‘Your hand’ ‘Your hands’)
What about that notation (fam. sing.) next to ‘tu(s) = your’ above?
In Spanish and other Latin-origin languages, people might say ‘Tu mano’ (‘Your hand’) or, if they want to be more formal, instead use the his/her/its form, as if talking to a third person, rather than talking to ‘you’ (the second person… I, the speaker, am the first person, by they way.)
Here are the Spanish third person forms, also used for being formal with the second person:
su(s) = his, her, your (formal)
‘su habitación’ ‘sus habitaciones’ (‘His/Her/Its room’ ‘His/Her/Its rooms’ ‘Your room’ – if being formal)
OK, so far so good? The possessive adjectives go before the nouns, and we need to remember two things – to use the singular or plural version (‘Tu mano’ ‘Tus manos’) and – if we’re trying to be super-polite – to use the ‘third person’ his/her/its form.
And now, on o the plurals, which are a little more complicated. This first one, the Spanish equivalent of ‘our’, has four forms, rather than two as for the singular possessive adjectives (‘mi’ ‘mis’ = ‘my’ ‘mys’). They’d be:
‘nuestro’ ‘nuestra’ ‘nuestros’ ‘nuestras’
The first two are singular, the second two plural. There are two versions of each, because with the first and second person plural possessive adjectives (our yours in English), we need to ‘conjugate’ (it means, ‘choose the correct version’) the possessive adjective according to two different characteristics of the noun they refer to – is it singular or plural (as with the singular), but also, is the noun ‘male’ or ‘female’?
Nouns in Latin-origin languages, for example ‘mano’ (‘hand’) have what’s called ‘gender’, so against any obvious logic, they are either ‘male’ or ‘female’, just like with people in English.
Your hand (‘mano’) is male, while your window (‘ventana’) is female. Go figure, but anyway, the PLURAL possessive ajectives need to specify whether the following noun is male/female/singular/plural.
Like this:
nuestro (-a, -os, -as) = our
‘Nuestra clase’ ‘Nuestras clases’ (‘Our class’, ‘Our classes’)
See that ‘clase’ has ‘nuestra’ before it, not ‘nuestro’? That’ll be because it’s female in gender. You can check that by looking in a dictionary, by the way.
The second person plural, ‘your’ in English, also has four forms:
vuestro (-a, -os, -as) = your (familiar)
‘Vuestro gato’ ‘Vuestros gatos’ (‘Your cat’ ‘Your cats’)
N.b. cats can be of either gender, obviously. We gender cats in English too, saying ‘his tail’ or ‘her fur’. If it’s a lady cat, then, we’d get:
‘Vuestra gata’ ‘Vuestras gatas’ (‘Your cat’ ‘Your cats’)
BUT, and it’s good news, the third person plural possessive adjective (‘their’ in English) doesn’t bother with the gender, so just the two forms. Hurrah!
su (s) = their , they, your (formal)
‘Su foto’ ‘Sus fotos’
N.b. ‘foto’, ending in ‘o’ looks like a male-gender noun (like ‘mano’, they tend to end in ‘o’) rather than a female-gender noun (like ‘ventana’, they tend to end in ‘a’), but it isn’t, as it’s the shortened form of the longer, female-gender, ‘fotografia’ (ends in ‘a’, see?)
Were we wanting to say ‘our photos’ or ‘your (informal) photos’, then we would have to reflect that female gender in the possessive adjective…
‘Nuestra foto’ ‘Nuestras fotos’
‘Vuestra foto’ ‘Vuestras fotos’
LESSON TAKEAWAYS
The first three persons singular have two forms: singular and plural. You don’t need to worry about the masculine and feminine bit.
‘Mi bolígrafo’ ‘My pen’
‘Mis reglas’ ‘My rulers/rules’
‘Tu cuaderno’ ‘Your notebook’
‘Tus gomas’ ‘Your erasers/tyres’
‘Su profesor’ ‘His/Her/Your (formal) teacher’
‘Sus profesores’ ‘His/Her/Your (formal) teachers’
But remember that ‘teacher’ like ‘cat’ also has a female version, so
‘Su profesora’ ‘His (female) teacher’
The possessive adjectives for the first and second person plural (nuestro and vuestro) have four forms: masculine and feminine. Each one has singular and plural.
‘Nuestro diccionario’ ‘Our dictionary’
‘Vuestro perro’ ‘Your dog’
‘Nuestra mesa’ ‘Our table’
‘Vuestra escuela’ ‘Your school’
‘Nuestros diccionarios’ ‘Our dictionaries’
‘Vuestros perros’ ‘Your dogs’
‘Nuestras mesas’ ‘Our tables’
‘Vuestras escuelas’ ‘Your schools’
The possessive adjective for the third person plural is the same that the possessive adjective for the third person singular. The context indicates which is meant.
Note:
‘Tú’ (with the accent) is the subject pronoun meaning “you” (informal).
‘Tu’ (without the accent) is the possessive adjective meaning “your” (informal).
What next?
Try an exercise on this grammar!
This listening task (online audio + transcript) is written to include lots of examples of possessive adjectives.