3.5 Possessive Adjectives

As demonstrated in the previous exercise, in French you can indicate possession by using the preposition de:

Le livre de Marie. / Marie’s book

Les cousins de Joseph. / Joseph’s cousins

You can also indicate possession by using a possessive adjective, the equivalent of “my,” “her,” “our,” etc. Possessive adjectives are used before the noun and must agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. Thus , if the noun is feminine, the possessive article must be feminine. For example, the feminine noun famille requires a feminine form.

Mon sac est bleu. / My purse is blue.

Ta mère s’appelle Renée. / Your mother is named Renée.

Leurs enfants sont grands. / Their children are big.

 

Possessive Adjectives
MASCULINE SINGULAR FEMININE SINGULAR PLURAL ENGLISH
mon ma mes my
ton ta tes your (familiar)
son sa ses his or her or its
notre notre nos our
votre votre vos your (formal or plural)
leur leur leurs their

Note  that the possessive adjective sa has three potential translations in English: his, her, or its. To determine which meaning is intended, you must look at the context.

Exercice 7 : Les Adjectifs Possessifs

Select the correct form of the possessive adjective. Don’t forget to make sure that the possessive adjective corresponds to the noun in gender and number.

mon, ma, mes

  1. mon/ma/mes père
  2. mon/ma/mes mère
  3. mon/ma/mes amies
  4. mon/ma/mes amis

ton, ta, tes

  1. ton/ta/tes parents
  2. ton/ta/tes amie
  3. ton/ta/tes frère
  4. ton/ta/tes soeurs

son, sa, ses

  1. son/sa/ses devoirs
  2. son/sa/ses professeur
  3. son/sa/ses amies
  4. son/sa/ses amis

notre, nos

  1. notre/nos livres
  2. notre/nos fille
  3. notre/nos examen
  4. notre/nos profs

votre, vos

  1. votre/vos cousins
  2. votre/vos copines
  3. votre/vos tante
  4. votre/vos parents

leur, leurs

  1. leur/leurs copains
  2. leur/leurs camarade
  3. leur/leurs mère
  4. leur/leurs amis

Exercice 8 : Mes choses

In this exercise, each person has his or her own possessions. Complete the sentence with the correct possessive adjective.

Fill in the Blanks

  1. Jules a [blank 1 – possessive adjective] ordinateur.
  2. Marie et Michèle ont [blank 2 – possessive adjective] stylo.
  3. Le professeur a [blank 3 – possessive adjective] craie.
  4. Nous avons [blank 4 – possessive adjective] radio.
  5. Est-ce que tu as [blank 5 – possessive adjective] devoirs?
  6. Vous avez [blank 6 – possessive adjective] sac.
  7. Christophe et moi avons [blank 7 – possessive adjective] voitures.
  8. J’ai [blank 8 – possessive adjective] livre.
  9. Marie a [blank 9 – possessive adjective] dictionnaire.
  10. Vous avez [blank 10 – possessive adjective] téléphone?

This section includes content derived from Francais Interactif, originally released under CC-BY, Liberté, originally released under CC BY-NC-SA, and Tex’s French Grammar, originally released under CC BY 3.0.

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Introduction to French Copyright © 2017 by Rita Palacios Ph.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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