French for Beginners: The Possessives

Welcome back, French on a Windowsill watchers! After we had a little break and revision getting into the celebrity quiz on youtube, it's back to the books today with my introduction to possessives. These are the ways in which you can show what belongs to whom in a sentence.

There are two types: Determiners, which go with a word and work exactly like "my, your, his, her, our, their" in English. And then there's pronouns, which actually stand for a word - in English these are "mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs". Make sure you understand this difference in your own language and you won't have a problem in French!

Easy Example

"This is my mug. Where's yours?"

"Oh, mine is in the kitchen."

The word "my" is a determiner, because it goes together with the noun "mug". The words "yours" and "mine" stand FOR the mug, so they are pronouns.

And now for how it works in French

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It's important to remember that in French, the possessive will change according to the gender and number of the word after it, not the word before it.

Print or save these tables for use in your revision.

The possessive determiner

The possessive determiner

The possessive pronoun

The possessive pronoun