Possessive Adjectives

The French writer Rousseau teaches that the corruption of the human mind began when somebody built a fence around a piece of land and said: This is my property.

Possession has - as you can see - a somewhat troubled philosophical history. However, grammar can't do without the concept of possession! We have been using possessive forms all along in our dialogues, and now we shall introduce them systematically.

In German, possessive adjectives are kind of a cross between pronouns and articles - they are determiners. A possessive replaces the article and, like the article, it agrees with the noun it modifies in gender, number, and case. Where does it get the endings to do this? Like kein, it is an ein-word. It is declined like the indefinite article ein, eine, ein, and forms the plural like kein.

But, like personal pronouns, the possessive in the third person singular also shows the gender of the person or thing which is in possession: his, her, it.

Here you have the possessive adjectives in the nominative case:

	Singular			Plural
	masculine	feminine	neuter	masc/fem/neut
my	mein	meine	mein	meine
your	dein	deine	dein	deine
his	sein	seine	sein	seine
her	ihr	ihre	ihr	ihre
its	sein	seine	sein	seine
our	unser	uns(e)re	unser	uns(e)re
your	euer	eu(e)re	euer	eu(e)re
their	ihr	ihre	ihr	ihre

This is the declension of the possessive mein. The other possessives have similar case endings.

Singular
	masculine	feminine	neuter
Nominative:	mein Freund	meine Freundin	mein Bett
Genitive:	meines Freund(e)s	meiner Freundin	meines Bett(e)s
Dative:	meinem Freund	meiner Freundin	meinem Bett
Accusative:	meinen Freund	meine Freundin	mein Bett

Plural
	masculine	feminine	neuter
Nominative:	meine Freunde	meine Freundinnen	meine Betten
Genitive:	meiner Freunde	meiner Freundinnen	meiner Betten
Dative:	meinen Freunden	meinen Freundinnen	meinen Betten
Accusative:	meine Freunde	meine Freundinnen	meine Betten

The ending of the possessive is determined by the noun which it modifies. This noun determines:

the case (nominative, genitve, dative, accusative) of the ending
the gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) of the ending
the number (singular or plural) of the ending

Since the possessive adjective modifies a noun you have to respect the gender of this noun. However, since the possessive indicates an owner, you have to respect in the third person singular the gender of the owner as well.

Das ist seine* Firma.*	The owner is Jochen. Firma is feminine.
Das ist ihr* VW-Bus.*	The owner is Anna.VW-Bus is masculine.
Das ist sein* Eis.*	The owner is a child (das Kind). Eis is neuter, too.
Das sind ihre* Blumen.*	The owner is a woman. Blumen is plural.
Andreas ist sein* Freund.*	The owner is Andreas. Freund is masculine.

As in real life, ownership is a complicated issue, too. Let's practice!