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3.7 Possessive adjectives

Possessive adjectives are those adjectives which refer to ownership, such as "your" and "his" in "What is your name?" or "What is his name?". We have already met some of them in the German equivalent of these questions "Wie ist Ihr Name?" or "Wie ist sein Name?". The full list of possessive adjectives is as follows:

  Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural
My mein  meine  mein  meine 
Your
(sing.)
dein
Ihr
 
deine
Ihre
 
dein
Ihr
 
deine
Ihre
 
His sein  seine  sein  seine 
Her ihr  ihre  ihr  ihre 
Its sein  seine  sein  seine 
Our unser  unsere  unser  unsere 
Your
(plural)
euer
Ihr
 
eure
Ihre
 
euer
Ihr
 
eure
Ihre
 
Their ihr  ihre  ihr  ihre 
Her ihr  ihre  ihr  ihre 
Its sein  seine  sein  seine 

Once again, we find that the endings on all possessive adjectives change when they are in the accusative. We require a second table to explain these fully:

  Masculine Feminine Neuter Plural
My meinen meine mein meine
Your
(sing.)
deinen
Ihren
 
deine
Ihre
 
dein
Ihr
 
deine
Ihre
 
His seinen  seine  sein  seine 
Her ihren  ihre  ihr  ihre 
Its seinen  seine  sein  seine 
Our unseren  unsere  unser  unsere 
Your
(plural)
euren
Ihren
 
eure
Ihre
 
euer
Ihr
 
eure
Ihre
 
Their ihren  ihre  ihr  ihre 
Her ihren  ihre  ihr  ihre 
Its seinen  seine  sein  seine 


A tipGrammatical points
1) Be very careful to distinguish between Ihr (= "your" (polite)) and ihr (= "their; her"). The capital letter is crucial here!

2) The spelling of the various forms of euer, which means "your" when you are addressing more than one person informally, can prove difficult. When an ending is added to "euer", the second "-e-" of the stem disappears.

So whilst "your child" is "euer Kind", "your children" translates as "eure Kinder", and "your cat" is "eure Katze".


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