Adjectives and adverbsPossessive adjectives

Possessive adjectives in German are the same as possessive pronouns.

Possessive adjectives are adjectives that indicate ownership. In other words, they describe to whom something or someone belongs. These are words like 'my', 'your', 'his', 'their', etc.

Here are some examples of possessive adjectives in use.

• Meine Mutter ist ziemlich groß. – My mother is quite tall.
• Deine Augen sind blau. – Your eyes are blue.
• Ihr Kuli ist kaputt. – Her pen is broken.

Hilfsvokabeln– Helpful vocabulary

• mein – my
• dein – your (singular)
• sein – his
• ihr – her
• unser – our
• euer – your (plural)
• ihr – their
• Ihr – your (formal)

When deciding which possessive adjective to use, you must consider three things:

• choose the appropriate possessive adjective from the table above, eg mein, dein, sein, etc
• know the gender of the noun you are showing the possession of, eg if you want to say 'my ruler' in German, you need to know that Lineal is a neuter noun – das Lineal
• be aware of the role the noun plays in the sentence, eg subject, direct object, etc because you need to know what case to use

The possessive adjectives take the same endings as ein, so for endings, follow the table below of endings for mein.

The same endings can be used for dein, sein, ihr, unser and euer, but when an ending is added to euer (informal, plural), it drops its second e, eg eure Mutter (your mother), not euere.