Possessive Pronouns

Italian possessive pronouns
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Pronomi possessivi

Italian possessive pronouns are used in place of nouns to indicate to whom or to what those nouns belong.

Per esempio…

Dov’è il tuo? Where is yours?
Ho perso le mie. I lost mine.

Characteristics of Italian possessive pronouns

  1. Always used with a definite article
  2. Replace a possessive adjective + noun
  3. Must agree with the possessed noun in gender and number
  4. Are identical to possessive adjectives*

Italian has 32 possessive pronouns

In Italian, there are different forms of possessive adjectives for each grammatical person depending on whether the possessed noun is masculine or feminine, singular or plural.

  Singular Plural
  masc fem masc fem
mine   il mio la mia i miei le mie
yours (tu)   il tuo la tua i tuoi le tue
his, hers
yours (Lei)
  il suo
il Suo
la sua
la Sua
i suoi
i Suoi
le sue
le Sue
ours   il nostro la nostra i nostri le nostre
yours (voi)   il vostro la vostra i vostri le vostre
i loro
i Loro
le loro
le Loro
theirs
yours (Loro)
  il loro
il Loro
la loro
la Loro

As you can see, Italian has far more possessives than English: four for each grammatical person. The gender and number of the possessed noun determine which form to use.

Yours Ours
il lavoro il tuo il nostro
la macchina la tua la nostra
i libri i tuoi i nostri
le mele le tue le nostre

 Attenzione!

The gender of the Italian possessive pronoun must agree with the gender of the noun possessed, not that of the possessor. Men and women both say il mio in reference to lavoro, and la mia when talking about their macchina, because lavoro is masculine and macchina is feminine. This is particularly tricky for the third person singular, where English uses gender differently: we say "his" and "hers," but in Italian, both of those must be translated by la sua if talking about, say, una macchina. The gender of the owner is completely irrelevant, grammatically speaking.

His Hers
il lavoro il suo il suo
la macchina la sua la sua
i libri i suoi i suoi
le mele le sue le sue

 * Except for the few exceptions when possessive adjectives are used without definite articles.

 Related lessons

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Possessive pronouns in Italian

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