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Possessive pronouns
Here, you will learn how to say 'my ...', 'our ...' or 'your ...' through the
possessive pronouns or adjectives.
It is once again true that you need to know the grammatical gender of the affected nouns first (der,
die, das), before you will be able to use the correct form of these possessive pronouns.
When Kai and Daniela talked about their families, the following sentences contained so called
possessive pronouns or possessive adjectives:
| Mein Bruder und ich spielen gerade Frisbee. | My brother and I are playing frisbee. | | Meine Schwester heißt Charlotte. | My sister's name is Charlotte. | | Seine Familie kommt aus Equador. | His family comes/is from Ecuador. | | Das hier ist unsere Wohnung. | This here is our apartment. |
Possessive pronouns in English are 'my', 'your', 'his', or 'our' and they indicate the possessor
of their subsequent noun. For example, if I say 'This is my book', I indicate that the book
belongs to me. Similarly, when you say 'Das ist mein Bruder' in German, you express that this guy
that you are pointing at is your brother and that he belongs to your family.
The following table lists the possessive pronouns for all 3 persons (singular
and plural).
| Person | | Singular | | Plural |
| 1st person |  | mein (my) | | unser (our) |
| 2nd person | | dein (your) | | euer (your) |
| 3rd person (er) | | sein (his) | | ihr (their)
ihr (your (formal)) |
| 3rd person (sie) | | ihr (her) |
| 3rd person (es) | | sein (its) |
The use of possessive pronouns in German is a little bit more complicated than in English. This
is because you have to know the gender of the subsequent noun and then modify the possessive pronoun
according to this gender.
Whenever a possessive pronoun describes a feminine noun, add the ending 'e' to that pronoun.
| meine Mutter | my mother | | seine Schwester | his sister | | mein Vater | my father | | mein Bruder | my brother |
When you add the feminine ending '-e' to 'euer' (2nd person plural), it becomes 'eure'.
This is simply because 'euere' would be difficult to pronounce.
| eure Katze | your cat (die Katze = feminine) |
Exercise
Let us now repeat all the nouns that we just learned describing members of the family. Try to make a complete sentence in German by using the given information.
Example:
my uncle + born in Wolfsburg
Mein Onkel ist in Wolfsburg geboren.
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| 1) your (sing.) sister + is from Ireland | |
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| 2) his mother + born in Bern | |
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| 3) my son + his name=Stefan | |
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| 4) her aunt + is friendly | |
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| 5) my father + born in Konstanz | |
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| 6) our uncle + is intelligent | |
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| 7) your (pl.) son + name=Maik | |
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| 8) their daughter + is young | |
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Lesson 4
