Possessive Adjectives and Pronouns: My, Mine and More

Possessive adjectives go directly before a noun to show who it belongs to: my sister, your keys, our teacher. They are sometimes called possessive determiners.

The possessive adjective depends on the owner, not on the thing. For a man, use his; for a woman, use her: Tom and his mother, Anna and her father. Many languages use one word for both, or match the word to the thing owned, so this is a common learner error.

Possessive adjectives never change for plural nouns: my book, my books. And we don't use them together with a, an or the: my car, not the my car. For a friend of mine, see the next sections.

Possessive pronouns replace a possessive adjective and a noun, so we don't repeat the noun: Is this your bag or mine? (mine = my bag). They stand alone, with no noun after them.

They are very useful in short answers, comparisons and questions with whose: Whose is this? It's hers. Their car is bigger than ours.

Notice that most of them end in -s (yours, hers, ours, theirs), but none of them has an apostrophe.

Its (no apostrophe) is the possessive of it: The cat licked its paws. It's (with an apostrophe) is the short form of it is or it has: It's cold. It's been a long day.

The same is true for your and you're, their and they're, and whose and who's. Possessive words never use an apostrophe. This is different from nouns, which use apostrophe s: Tom's car, my mother's house. Learn that pattern in possessive 's, and the short forms in English contractions.

We say a friend of mine, a cousin of hers, a colleague of ours. This pattern means one of my friends, and it is used when the person is not the only one. We can't say a my friend.

To make a possessive stronger, add own after the possessive adjective: I have my own room (it is only mine, I don't share it). She wants her own business. We can also say on my own, which means alone: I live on my own.

For body parts and clothes, English uses possessive adjectives where many languages use the: I washed my hair. He broke his arm. Put your coat on.

Learners sometimes confuse her (possessive) and her (object), because the word is the same. Her bag is possessive; I saw her is an object. For other people, the words are different: his car but I saw him; their house but I called them.

Also remember the difference between possessives and subject and object pronouns: they is the subject, them is the object, their goes before a noun, and theirs stands alone. If you want to say a thing belongs to someone by name, use possessive 's: Sara's phone, not the phone of Sara.

Possessives are everywhere in daily life: introducing family, finding lost things, sharing food and paying bills. Whose is it? and Is this yours? are common questions in shops, cafés and offices. In games and queues, people also say It's your turn when someone else should go next. For family words to use with these possessives, see family members vocabulary.