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In this lesson, we will talk about special adjectives used in the English language to express the possession (ownership) of something. We are talking about possessive adjectives.

The main possessive adjectives are:

Possessive adjective	Example
My Your His Her Its Our Their	My friend is a good friend. is that your book? My teacher is coming with his wife. That woman is coming with her husband. My dog broke its leg. Our country is beautiful. The children ate their breakfast before going to school.

Let’s look at some more examples:

• This is my father.
• I have your book right here.
• I went to his house.
• Did you see her dog?
• Its legs are are broken.
• He is our friend.
• This is their house.

Now let’s see some longer sentences:

• I have been talking to their father about how much trouble our son has been.
• That bird is very beautiful. Its wings have such nice colors.
• Did you see his shoes? No, I only saw hers.

 

All possessive adjectives need to agree with the possessor and thus must always be located before the nouns. You do not need to add s to the adjective if the noun is already plural, for example: your paintings are very nice vs. yours paintings are very nice.

 

Make sure not to confuse its and it’s. Its means it belongs to it. It’s means it is. In the addition to the possessive adjectives, there are possessive pronouns. Click here to see more about them.

 

Let’s do some exercises with what we have learned already. Fill in the blanks for these sentences. For some of them, there are multiple correct answers:

 

1. Do you know John? Do you know ____ phone number?
2. I want to give you ____ laptop back.
3. We’ve had this piano in ____ family for generations.
4. Can you give me some information about ____ job?
5. That dog is ____ dog.