Adjetivos posesivos / Possessive Adjectives
ADJETIVOS POSESIVOS
Possessive adjectives, like descriptive adjectives, are used to qualify people, places, or things. Possessive adjectives express the quality of ownership or possession. Possessive adjectives have to agree in gender and number with the noun.
Two types of possessive adjectives, one type goes before the noun, and the other type goes after the noun.
Before the noun
The following are the possessive adjectives that go before the noun;
| Personal
pronoun |
Possessive
Adjective Singular |
Possessive
Adjective Plural |
| Yo | mi |
mis |
| Tú | tu | tus |
| Él | su | sus |
| Ella | su | sus |
| Usted | su | sus |
| Nosotros | nuestro | nuestros |
| Nosotras | nuestra | nuestras |
| Vosotros | vuestro | vuestros |
| Vosotras | vuestra | vuestras |
| Ellos | su | sus |
| Ellas | su | sus |
| Ustedes | su | sus |
Examples:
- ¿Cuándo viene su familia?
- Él es mi esposo y ellos son nuestros hijos.
- ¿Dónde están tus zapatos nuevos?
- Nuestra casa está en el Cajón del Maipo.+
Possessive adjectives in Spanish—like all adjectives!—must agree in number with the noun that they modify. In the case of nosotros and vosotros, they also must agree in gender with what is owned:
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NOTA IMPORTANTE
The adjective will be singular or plural (and feminine or masculine for nosotros and vosotros) based on the object(s) owned, not the person who owns the object. Choose which possessive to use based on the owner, but the ending you give to the possessive does not have anything to do with the number of people who have the object or the gender of the owner. Note that since the 3rd person possessive adjectives could cause some confusion, the use of ser+de is common in these instances for clarification. Context clues can also be used to clarify to whom an object belongs.
After a noun
The following are the forms of possessive adjectives after a noun;
| POSSERSOR | |||||
| Masculine | Femenine | Masculine | Femenine | ||
| 1ª person | mío | mía | míos | mías | |
| 2ª person | tuyo | tuya | tuyos | tuyas | |
| 3ª person | suyo | suya | suyos | suyas | |
| 1ª person | nuestro | nuestra | nuestros | nuestras | |
| 2ª person | vuestro | vuestra | vuestros | vuestras | |
| 3ª person | suyo | suya | suyos | suyas |
Por ejemplo:
- ¡Hijo mío! ¿Dónde has estado?
- Ella es una amiga mía.
- Padre nuestro, que está en los cielos…
The possessive adjectives after the noun gives more emphasis to the noun.
PRÁCTICA
Now that we have learned about the possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns let’s practice.
Ejercicio 1
Ejercicio 2
Licensing and Attribution:
Grammar content on this page was remixed from Español por el mundo by Gemma Morawski and Ani Alcocer, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Adaptations include voice pronunciations provided by Gemma Morawski and openly-licensed images throughout the H5P and 3.11: Gramática. Los adjetivos posesivos is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Erica Brown, Alejandra Escudero, María Cristina Montoya, & Elizabeth Small (OER SUNY) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request. 5.6: En contexto- Los posesivos is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Erica Brown, Alejandra Escudero, María Cristina Montoya, & Elizabeth Small (OER SUNY) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform. Further adaptations include practice activities created by Gemma Morawski via H5p and