Spanish Lessons

Dictionary

Verb Conjugator

Vocabulary

¡Practiquemos!

Resources

Possessive Adjectives & Pronouns

Possessive Adjectives (the short way)

You don't normally think of them this way, but words like "my," "your," "our," and "their" are actually adjectives. They do, after all, modify nouns like any other adjective:

In fact they are known as "possessive adjectives." Here are all of the English possessive adjectives:

(Notice that no distinction is made between the singular and plural forms of the possessive adjective corresponding to "you" although in some parts of the United States "you all's" or "y'all's" would not look out of place in the plural column.)

The basic Spanish possessive adjective forms are fairly straightforward:

(At this point you may be wondering why "tu" doesn't have the accent you're accustomed to seeing. Remember the word "tú" is a noun and means "you." The word "tu" (without the accent) is an adjective and means "yours." Understanding this distinction is very useful when translating.)

The chart above looks pretty easy, but it shows only the basic forms. Like any good Spanish adjective, possessive adjectives need to agree in number so we have some different variations for plural forms:

Now would be a good time to talk about what we mean by "plural" in this situation. The plural form is used when we have more than one thing being possessed, not when we have more than one possessor:

In the first example, since there is more than one key, "my" is translated in the plural "mis" even though there is only one of me. Similarly in the second example, "his" is translated in the plural "sus" even though there is only one of him. In the last example there is more than one of them, but we use the singular "su" because this time there is only one key. If you can remember adjectives (even possessive adjectives) only modify the nouns they come before (or after), this concept shouldn't be too difficult.

But now it's going to start to get complicated, because good Spanish adjectives need to agree in number and in gender. Look at our basic chart again:

We can't really change the "i" in "mi" from one gender to another since "i" is gender-neutral. The same thing can be said for the "u" in both "tu" and "su." We can however change "nuestro" and "vuestro" from their current masculine states to feminine ones which means we actually have even more options:

Just like when we decide whether to use a singular or a plural adjectives, we pick a masculine or a feminine adjective based on the gender of the thing(s) being possessed, not the gender of the possessor:

In the first example "nuestra" agrees (in gender and in number) with the noun it modifies ("bicicleta") and has nothing to do with the fact that it belongs to a group of girls. You notice that changing the ownership to a group of boys does nothing to the phrase because the noun is still "bicicleta" (singular and feminine). Likewise in the last example "nuestros" agrees in gender and in number with "libros" and has nothing to do with the girls (gender or number) who own the books.

Let's look at another issue. How would you translate this phrase?

su camisa

Looking at our charts we see that "su" could mean "his," "her," "its," "your" (in the Ud. form), or "their." While there wouldn't be much confusion with any of the other possessive adjectives, "su" causes some trouble since it can mean so many different things. What do Spanish-speaking people do in order to be understood?

First of all, context will take care of most of these kinds of problems. If this phrase popped-up in a conversation about Gloria, for example, it would be fairly clear that it means "her shirt." But if you hear this it in a conversation about a number of things belonging to a number of different people, it wouldn't be so clear. If context doesn't help, we can use a more basic but accurate construction using the preposition "de."

(You may be wondering why "de él" doesn't get shortened to "del." It's important that we don't shorten it in this situation because "de él" doesn't mean "of the" but rather "of he" meaning "his.")

It looks strange to English speakers but possessive adjectives are frequently omitted when talking about body parts and clothing (and other items closely associated with a person). This is especially true when the sentence includes an object pronoun:

Possessive Adjectives (the long way)

In addition to a "short form" possessive adjective, Spanish also has a "long form." Before you start to complain about the complexity of Spanish, remember that English also has several ways to show possession. Consider:

We can see how these two options relate to each other by comparing them side to side:

Here are the corresponding short form and long form possessive adjectives in Spanish:

The long form is obviously longer (for the most part) and it has a complete set of singular/plural, masculine/feminine options. One thing worth making an immediate note of is that the nosostros and vosotros possessive adjectives are exactly the same in the short form and long form.

Now that we know what long form possessive adjectives are, it would be a good idea to know how to use them. Generally speaking the short form comes before a noun and the long form comes after:

Looking closer you can see another important difference. A short form possessive adjective replaces the article in front of the noun (e.g. "Las llaves" becomes "mis llaves"), but that article needs to remain in front of the noun using a long form possessive adjective (e.g. "Las llaves mías").

As usual our adjective needs to agree in gender and in number with the noun it modifies. And remember that we're talking about the gender and number of the item possessed, not the possessor of the item.

In the first example the man is (obviously) masculine, the bicycle is feminine, and the adjective, "mía," is also feminine to agree with the noun it modifies, "bicicleta." The same scenario is true of the other two examples (and yes, "mapa" is masculine); the genders and number of the women have no impact whatsoever on the gender and number of the adjectives used.

Now it's passed time to answer the most important question regarding short form and long form possessive adjectives. Why use one form instead of the other? Let's take a look at some translations:

As you can see the long form can be translated two different ways. One translation uses the word "of" and puts the possessive adjective after the noun. The other way is exactly the same as how we would translate the short form. Which begs the question, "If they're translated the same way, how do I know which to use?"

Well, if you needed to translate something like "the dog of yours" you would have to utilize the long form ("el perro tuyo"). If on the other hand, you needed to translate "your dog," you could use either form ("tu perro" or "el perro tuyo").

The short form is more common in everyday situations and the long form tends to sound a bit more cultured or refined but they are mostly interchangeable.

Possessive Pronouns

Now is a great time to discuss possessive pronouns. Whereas an adjective is a word that modifies a noun, a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. Some examples:

Similarly a possessive pronoun is a word that replaces a possessive adjective/noun combination:

It may make more sense to you in the context of a sentence:

In the first sentence "my," "your," and "her" are possessive adjectives that modify "bike." In the second sentence "mine," "yours," and "hers" are possessive pronouns because they have replaced "my bike," "your bike," and "her bike." They make the sentence more compact. We haven't explicitly stated what "mine" or "yours" is, but the context makes it clear that we're talking about "my bike" and "your bike."

The possessive pronouns in English (with the possessive adjectives for comparison):

And now the Spanish:

Here's why we're looking at possessive pronouns right now: with the exception of the article, they're the same as the long form possessive adjectives. And actually, the article isn't really an exception because we need to have an article before the noun when using the long form possessive adjective anyway.

In fact, if you can handle using the long form possessive adjective, all you need to do to change it into a pronoun is get rid of the noun. In the samples above we simply remove "coche," "perro," and "libros" from the long form to get our pronouns.