Monday, July 19, 2010

Possessive Adjectives and Pronouns, Part 2

Let's continue where we left off with possessive pronouns. Spanish has a list of stressed pronouns that agree in gender and quantity of the noun that is being modified; the possessive adjective is also placed right after the noun. Each of the possessive adjectives in this case include the corresponding article as well, and are all four-form structures.

Here's the complete list, using each time a masculine and feminine noun in order to show you the difference:

(yo)el perro mío, la camisa mía



(tú)el perro tuyo, la camisa tuya



(él, ella, Ud.)el perro suyo, la camisa suya



(nosotros)el perro nuestro, la camisa nuestra



(vosotros)el perro vuestro, la camisa vuestra



(ellos, ellas, Uds.)el perro suyo, la camisa suya



If you want to pluralize the possessive adjectives, you simply just use a plural article (los, las, unos, unas) along with a plural possessive adjective. To pluralize the pssessive adjective, you simply add an "-s":

Las medias tuyas siempre están sucias. Your socks are always dirty.


Sure, we can simply just replace the stressed possessive adjective with "Tus medias siempre están sucias." However, remember that in this way we're stressing the possessive adjective, usually in comparison to another.

In addition to the stressed possessive adjectives, we can also remove the noun completely so we turn it into a possessive pronoun. This is extremely easy to do. Observe:

Al gerente le gustó el informe. The manager liked the report.

¿El informe de quién? Whose report?

El mío. Mine.


Sigue estudiando,

Professor Joel

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