Articles/Possessive Pronouns/Possessives

A possessive article is an article which goes in front of a noun where you need to demonstrate who the noun belongs to, such as ‘my lamp’ or ‘her carpet’. These are also known as the possessive pronouns because you can use them on their own as a pronoun in the sense of ‘that’s mine’ or ‘no, it’s ours’.

The possessive articles are great because they behave in exactly the same way as ‘ein’ – you simply take the possessive article and add the ending that ‘ein’ takes with that gender and case. The articles are:

ich: mein-

du: dein-

er: sein-

sie: ihr-

es: sein-

wir: unser-

ihr: euer-

sie, Sie: ihr- / Ihr-

So let’s take another look at how ‘ein’ behaves with different genders and cases.

If I wanted to say, ‘Here is a beautiful teapot’ I would need the feminine nominative indefinite article, so:

Hier ist eine wunderschöne Teekanne.

The ending for the article is simply -e. So, if I want to say ‘Here is my beautiful teapot’ I just need to glue that ending onto my possessive article:

Hier ist meine wunderschöne Teekanne.

Another example:

I’m going clubbing with a gigolo/my gigolo.

Ich gehe mit einem Gigolo/mit meinem Gigolo feiern.

We’ll learn more about the possessives and using them as pronouns in a future lesson.