Possessivartikel: possessive articles
The Possessivartikel is a small piece of grammar but it is used extremely often in everyday communication. This lesson helps you understand its true nature, tell it apart from possessive pronouns, and use it correctly in real sentences.
What is a Possessivartikel?
A possessive article tells us who owns an object, person, or thing. It always accompanies a noun and stands in front of it, like mein Buch, deine Tasche, unser Haus.
Telling it apart from possessive pronouns
- A Possessivartikel stands in front of a noun: meine Tasche.
- A Possessivpronomen stands alone and replaces the whole noun: Das ist meine.
- If a noun follows, it is a possessive article; if no noun follows, it is usually a possessive pronoun.
The original table of possessive articles
| Person | Basic form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ich | mein | mein Buch |
| du | dein | deine Tasche |
| er | sein | sein Auto |
| sie | ihr | ihre Wohnung |
| wir | unser | unsere Schule |
| ihr | euer | eure Familie |
Possessive articles are also declined across the 4 cases just like the ein-words. If you are just starting out, you should master Nominativ and Akkusativ first, then expand to Dativ and Genitiv.
| Case | Maskulin | Feminin | Neutrum | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominativ | mein | meine | mein | meine |
| Akkusativ | meinen | meine | mein | meine |
| Dativ | meinem | meiner | meinem | meinen |
| Genitiv | meines | meiner | meines | meiner |
- With a masculine noun in Akkusativ, the article usually adds -en: meinen Bruder.
- With feminine and plural nouns, you will meet many forms like meine, deine, unsere...
- In Dativ, forms like meinem, meiner, meinen appear quite often in standard writing and speech.
- euer in particular is an exception in its form, and it's very easy to get wrong if you're not careful.
euer has one very special feature: when an ending is added, the second vowel e is usually dropped. So you will see eure, euren, eurem, eures rather than euere... This is a mistake learners make very often.
Ist das deine Tasche? - Ja, das ist meine Tasche.
Is that your bag? - Yes, that is my bag.
Wo ist unser Auto?
Where is our car?
Mẹo học nhanh
euer is an exception that's very easy to forget: when an ending is added, the second e is usually dropped, e.g. eure, eurem, euren, eures.