Dutch Possessive Adjectives and Pronouns

Learn how to say my, your, his, her, its, our, and their in Dutch

   

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Dutch Possessives: Adjectives and Pronouns

 

Singular		Plural
mijn (m'n)	my	ons / onze	our
jouw (je)	your (informal)	jullie (je)	your (informal)
uw	your (formal)	uw	your (formal)
zijn (z'n)	his	hun	their
haar	her
zijn (z'n)	its

 

Ons is used before singular neuter/het nouns, and onze is used elsewhere (before singular common/de nouns, and all plural nouns.) Je, the unstressed form of jouw, is commonly used in spoken and written Dutch, unless the speaker/writer wants to stress the pronoun. In the plural, jullie is the norm, unless jullie has already been used in the sentence, then je is used to avoid the redundancy. The other unstressed forms are not commonly written in the standard language, but are commonly spoken and written in informal communication.

Like in English, Dutch possessive adjectives are used in front of a noun to show possession: mijn boek (my book). There are a few ways to express the -'s used in English too. -s can be added to proper names and members of the family: Jans boek (John's book) The preposition van can be used to mean of: het boek van Jan (the book of John = John's book) And in more colloquial speech, the unstressed forms in parentheses above (agreeing in gender and number) can be used in place of the -s: Jan z'n boek (John's book)

To form the possessive pronouns, add -e to the stressed forms (except for jullie) and use the correct article. The only way to show possession with jullie is to use van jou (literally meaning "of you"), although all the others can be used with van too.

de/het mijne, jouwe, uwe, zijne, hare, onze, hunne (mine, yours, yours, his/its, hers, ours, theirs)

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