French Possessive Pronouns – How to Use Guide

With this session, you would be introduced to a new language and how grammar works hand-in-hand to bring out some great sentences. The language that you would be learning today is French. Yes, you might be really excited about it.

So let’s begin.

Have you ever known that there would be about 4 different ways of saying ‘mine’ in French? In this session, we would help you to learn about the various three criteria which are used to determine the correct use of possessive pronouns in french language.

But before we dig deep into a different language it is better to clear the concept of Possessive Pronouns. So what do you mean by possessive pronoun?

How to Use Possessive Pronouns in French

Just like you have known and studied other pronouns, this pronoun is also used to replace the noun or a group of words that would form a nominal group. The possessive pronoun tries to avoid unnecessary repetition if the same noun is used again and again in a sentence or in a group of the sentence. You can replace the nouns by the words ‘mine’, ‘yours’, or ‘hers’ which are a part of the possessive pronoun.

We saw the concept in English but in French also we follow the same procedure or guidelines. It should be very clear from the context what would be the context and who the pronoun would be referring to. You would see just like some other pronouns, French possessive pronouns are also interesting – you would encounter some words like mon, ton, ses, etc.

These would be helpful in building or establishing a good relationship between the object and a person. Sometimes the relationship can be established with another object as well.

Let us see Examples:

1. Mes yeux sont verts. (My eyes are green)
2. Les miens sont verts. (Mine are green)

You can see in the above example that it is very clear from the context that will make us understand the possessive pronoun. It is evident from the sentence that it is trying to establish by the word ‘mes’ which would indicate the possessor is myself. It is used in the first person singular. Just like another sentence the word ‘mes’ and ‘yeux’ are replaced with ‘ les’.

Singular & Plural Forms of Pronouns in French – Chart

Possessor	English	Masculine Singular	Feminine Singular	Masculine Plural	Feminine Plural
1st pers.sing	mine	le mien	la mienne	les miens	les miennes
2nd pers.sing	yours	le tien	la tienne	les tiens	les tiennes
3rd pers.sing	his/hers	le sien	la sienne	les siens	les siennes
1st pers.plur.	ours	le nôtre	la nôtre	les nôtres	les nôtres
2nd pers.plur.	yours	le vôtre	la vôtre	les vôtres	les vôtres
3rd pers.plur.	theirs	le leur	la leur	les leurs	les leurs

Conclusion:

Till now, you have been learning about the possessive pronouns in English, but with this blog, you would be able to do in the French language as well. You can easily start with some simple words and then move ahead with sentence formation. With the help of a reference table, you could do a lot of improvement in your sentences. If you still are facing some issues then you can get back to us through the blog comment section. So stay tuned to EnglishBix.