Chapter 7 · A2

Possessives

Might help first: Ch. 1 — Nouns: Gender, Ch. 2 — Nouns: Number (a suggestion, never a requirement)

Every language marks who something belongs to, but Spanish does it with two full, parallel systems rather than one: a short set of forms that sit before the noun (mi casa) and a longer set that sit after it or stand alone (una casa mía, esta casa es mía). Both agree with the thing owned, not the owner — a rule that trips up English speakers constantly, since English possessives (his, her) track the owner’s gender instead. This chapter builds the short forms first, then the long forms, then works through the one genuinely ambiguous corner of the system: su and suyo, which can mean his, her, your (formal), or their with nothing in the word itself to tell you which.

Core Pattern: Short-Form Possessives

Mi, tu, su… and what they agree with

Short-form possessives sit directly before the noun and only mark number, except for nuestro and vuestro, which mark gender too:

Possessor	Singular possession	Plural possession
yo	mi	mis
tú	tu	tus
él/ella/usted	su	sus
nosotros	nuestro/nuestra	nuestros/nuestras
vosotros	vuestro/vuestra	vuestros/vuestras
ellos/ellas/ustedes	su	sus

Mi casa es pequeña, pero nuestra casa de verano es grande.

My house is small, but our summer house is big.

Mis padres viven en Toledo.

My parents live in Toledo.

Mis agrees with padres (plural) — not with yo, which is singular.

Building Out: Long-Form Possessives

Short-form possessives are historically shortened (apocopated) versions of a fuller set of words. Those full forms — the long-form possessives — didn’t disappear; they simply moved to a different position in the sentence and picked up a fuller agreement pattern along the way.

The long forms: mío, tuyo, suyo…

Possessive Pronouns (Long Form)masculine singular citation form

yomío

nosotrosnuestro

tútuyo

vosotrosvuestro

él/ella/ustedsuyo

ellos/ellas/ustedessuyo

Each of these further inflects for the gender and number of the thing possessed, just like any adjective:

	Masc. sing.	Fem. sing.	Masc. pl.	Fem. pl.
mine	mío	mía	míos	mías
ours	nuestro	nuestra	nuestros	nuestras

Where long-form possessives are used

Long forms appear after ser (stating whose something is), after a noun without an article for emphasis, and in a handful of fixed exclamations:

Esta chaqueta es mía.

This jacket is mine.

Es un amigo mío.

He's a friend of mine.

No article — un amigo mío, not un mi amigo.

¡Dios mío!

My God!

miotherlibroother(short form: before the noun)connector

unotherlibroothermíoother(long form: after the noun)connector

Agreement recap: possessor vs. possessed

The core rule from the short forms carries over unchanged: every possessive, short or long, agrees with the thing possessed, never the possessor. The long forms just have a fuller paradigm to do it with — four shapes (mío/mía/míos/mías) instead of two (mi/mis).

Nuance, Exceptions & Contrast

The ambiguity of su and suyo

Su/sus and suyo/suya/suyos/suyas cover four different possessors — his, her, your (formal usted/ustedes), and their — with a single form:

Es su libro.

It's his/her/your (formal)/their book.

Context alone decides which — nothing in su itself narrows it down.

Context resolves this most of the time, but not always — and when it doesn’t, Spanish has a fix.

Disambiguating with de él, de ella, de usted…

Replace su/suyo with the definite article plus the noun plus de + a prepositional pronoun:

Es el libro de ella.

It's her book.

Es el libro de usted.

It's your book (formal).

Es el libro de ellos.

It's their book.

Possessives and body parts/clothing: the reflexive-article pattern

B1+

With body parts and clothing, Spanish typically skips the possessive altogether and uses a reflexive pronoun with a plain definite article instead:

Me lavo las manos antes de comer.

I wash my hands before eating.

Not lavo mis manos — the reflexive me already establishes whose hands they are.

Se puso la chaqueta y salió.

She put on her jacket and left.

Not su chaqueta — se already identifies the owner.

Bringing It Together

Mi hermana perdió su móvil, pero encontró uno parecido en el sofá — resultó ser el mío, no el suyo.

My sister lost her phone, but she found a similar one on the couch — it turned out to be mine, not hers.

Short form (mi, su), long form used as a pronoun (el mío, el suyo), all agreeing with the noun owned in each case.

Where to Go Next

Chapter 15, Reflexive Pronouns & Reflexive Verbs — the true home of the body-parts/clothing pattern introduced above.
Chapter 16, Prepositional Pronouns — the full mí/ti/él/ella/usted set used to disambiguate su/suyo.
Chapter 6, Demonstratives — the sibling determiner system that shares the same noun-agreement logic covered here.

Ready to practice?

8 exercises · multiple-choice, fill-blank, error-correction…