Lesson 1.5: Possession

In this lesson, we’ll learn how to describe possession, which has nothing to do with evil spirits. In linguistics, possession is the way we say who owns something or to whom something is related.

This can be done with either a possessive pronoun

or a possessive noun.

Possessive pronouns

In French, there are three different possessive pronouns for each of our six pronoun groups (I, you, he/she/it, we, you plural, and they). There is a masculine singular one, a feminine singular one, and a plural one. They are:

My

Your (tu form)

His/her/its

Our

Your (vous form)

Their

Please note that these pronouns change form based on the gender and number of the noun they modify, not the owner. That means that “his,” “her,” and “its” can all translate to either son, sa, or ses, depending on the noun they modify. Also, they always come before the noun they modify, unlike adjectives.

Here are some examples with the words camion (truck, m/s), voiture (car, f/s), and livres (books, m/p):

Possessive pronouns follow another rule to help avoid bordering vowel sounds: if using a feminine singular possessive pronoun would cause bordering vowel sounds, the masculine singular pronoun should be used instead (even though the noun is feminine). This can happen with ma, ta, and sa.

Possessive nouns

Possessive nouns are much easier because they just require you to learn one word: de, which normally means “of.” To use a possessive noun, follow the format le/la/les + [noun] + de + [owner].