Pronouns
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Two small word families handle every kind of ownership in English: my, your, our before a noun — mine, yours, ours on their own.
My is a possessive adjective and always stands before a noun (my office). Mine is a possessive pronoun and stands alone (The office is mine) — it replaces adjective plus noun.
Updated: July 2026
A1 · Pronouns · 10 min
A structured ten-slide lesson for A1 learners. Hear both possessive forms in context, meet the rule from a tutor, then practise across six interactive drills before a final six-question quiz. The whole arc takes about ten minutes and nothing requires a signup.
Possessives in English answer a single question: who does something belong to? Two small word families share that job. The first family — my, your, his, her, its, our, their — is called possessive adjectives (or possessive determiners), and each one stands directly before a noun: my office, your email, our client, their offer. The second family — mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs — is called possessive pronouns, and each one stands alone, with no noun at all: The idea was mine. The mistake was theirs. Both families express exactly the same ownership; the only difference is whether a noun follows or not. That is the entire core rule, and it is pleasingly mechanical: look at the slot after the possessive word. If a noun sits there, you need the first family. If nothing sits there, you need the second. Once you make that one decision reliably, you already control most of this topic. The rest of this lesson covers the three places where learners still stumble: his versus her, its versus it's, and the tempting but always-wrong apostrophe.
It pays to see both rows side by side once, because the pairs are pleasantly regular. My becomes mine, your becomes yours, her becomes hers, our becomes ours, and their becomes theirs — so in most cases you simply add an s. Two forms break the pattern: his stays identical in both families (his office — the office is his), and its has no standing-alone counterpart in normal use; a sentence like "the decision was its" simply does not occur. Just as important is what never changes about these words: unlike German possessives, English possessives take no endings at all. You say my colleague, my colleagues, my team, and my teams — always the same unchanged my, whether the noun is singular or plural. Where German makes you choose between mein, meine, meinem, meinen, and meiner, English gives you exactly one word per person for the before-a-noun job and one word for the standing-alone job. That means less to memorise and fewer places to go wrong — you only have to unlearn the habit of hunting for an ending.
This is the single biggest trap for German-speaking learners. In English, the choice between his, her, and its depends entirely on the owner — the person or thing something belongs to — and never on the noun that follows. Mr. Weber is a man, so it is his company, his career, and his assistant, regardless of the fact that "die Firma" is feminine in German. Ms. Schmidt is a woman, so her office and her plan, even though the German nouns carry different genders. Why does this error happen so often? In German you do pick the stem by owner too (sein or ihr), but the ending then agrees with the following noun: seine Firma, sein Auto, seinem Team. Your language instinct is therefore trained to glance at the noun whenever a possessive appears — and exactly that reflex misfires in English, especially in fast speech. The rescue is one deliberate check question: who is the owner? A man → his. A woman → her. A company, an animal without a name, a thing → its. The noun after it can be ignored completely.
The second big error source is not grammar but spelling. Its without an apostrophe is the possessive adjective: The company is proud of its products. It's with an apostrophe is the contraction of it is (or it has): It's a great product. This mix-up is so widespread that even native speakers produce it constantly — in emails, on websites, even in official documents. The test is simple: read the sentence aloud and replace the word with "it is". If the sentence still makes sense, write it's. If it does not, write its. The same logic protects the whole possessive pronoun family: yours, hers, ours, and theirs are never written with an apostrophe. Forms like your's, her's, our's, and their's simply do not exist in English, however often you may meet them online. In English, the apostrophe marks either an omission (it's = it is, don't = do not) or the genitive of nouns (the client's email). Possessive pronouns already express ownership by themselves — an extra apostrophe would have no job to do there.
Possessive pronouns show up in three typical sentence patterns. First, after the verb be, when you state or contest ownership: The idea was mine. The final decision is yours. This desk is hers. Second, in comparisons and contrasts, where the pronoun replaces an already-mentioned noun and avoids clumsy repetition: Their offer was cheaper, but ours was better — nobody wants to say "but our offer was better than their offer". Third, in the handy of-construction, which has no direct German equivalent: a colleague of mine, a client of ours, a friend of hers. This of-pattern is remarkably useful in working life because it sounds more casual than "one of my colleagues" and slots elegantly into introductions: "This is Anna, a colleague of mine from the Hamburg office." In all three patterns, run the same check as always: no noun may follow a possessive pronoun. The moment a noun follows, you jump back to the first family — my, your, our, and their siblings.
Few grammar topics pay off in business English as quickly as this one, because statements of ownership and belonging sit inside almost every professional sentence. You talk about our team, our client, and our offer, about their proposal and their deadline, about the company and its products. In meetings you draw lines of responsibility: That part was ours; the delay was theirs. In emails you confirm who acts next: The next step is yours — short, polite, and unambiguous. Two refinements deserve special attention. First, companies are grammatically things in English, so the word is its — the company and its subsidiaries, the app and its features — even where German says "ihre Produkte". Second, in fast-moving meetings German-speaking professionals often let a wrong his or her slip out when talking about colleagues; a brief internal pause — who is the owner? — works more reliably than any rule table. Getting these small words right makes you sound instantly more precise and more professional, because mistakes like "the company and his products" register far more strongly with English-speaking business partners than many learners assume.
My is a possessive adjective and always needs a noun right after it: my office, my colleagues. Mine is a possessive pronoun and stands alone, with no noun: "The office is mine." Both express the same ownership. The quickest test: look at the slot after the word. If a noun follows, use my — if nothing follows, use mine. The same pattern covers your/yours, her/hers, our/ours, and their/theirs.
Because German trains your instinct to look at the noun: in "seine Firma" or "ihrem Team", the ending agrees with the noun that follows. In English, only the owner counts. Mr. Weber → his company, even though "die Firma" is feminine in German; Ms. Schmidt → her plan, even though "der Plan" is masculine. The check question is always: who is the owner? The noun after the possessive plays no role in the choice.
Its without an apostrophe shows possession: "The company is proud of its products." It's with an apostrophe is the contraction of it is or it has: "It's a great product." This feels counter-intuitive because noun genitives do take an apostrophe (the client's email) — but possessive forms like its, yours, and theirs never do. The test: replace the word with "it is". If it fits, write it's; if it does not, write its.
Yes — this topic is one of the few areas where the two varieties agree completely. My, mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, its, our, ours, their, and theirs are formed, spelled, and used identically in the US and the UK, and the "a friend of mine" construction is equally common on both sides of the Atlantic. What you learn here works everywhere — only the pronunciation of some forms (such as the r in yours) varies with the accent.
Possessives build directly on the personal pronouns: you should be confident with the subject forms from *subject-pronouns* (A1), because my, his, and our derive from I, he, and we. *Object-pronouns* (A1) helps too, since me/mine and him/his are often confused. After this lesson, *reflexive-pronouns* (A2) is the natural next step — myself, yourself, and their siblings complete the pronoun system.
Historically they were the same word: in older English, mine also appeared before nouns, especially before vowels — you still find "mine eyes" in Shakespeare and in old hymns. Over time the before-a-noun form lost its n and became my, while mine survived for standing alone. Its is a latecomer too: it only established itself around Shakespeare's era — before that, his served for things as well. Today's tidy two-family system is the product of centuries of language change.
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