Learning Russian .Net

Possessive Pronouns

The possessive pronouns my, his, her, our, your, their relate possession to someone or something. In English, they are used to express that the speaker has something. “This is my car” expresses that someone owns a car. “This is her brother” expresses that someone has a brother.

In Russian, these possessive pronouns are used as well, though they need to be declined to match the gender, case and number of a noun to find the matching form of a pronoun.

Take a look at the table and note that each of the English pronouns can be translated into Russian in 4 different forms depending on the number and gender of a noun, while его, её and их never change form similar to their English counterparts “his”, “her”, “their”.

Which form to choose?

To choose the correct form for translation you need to know the gender and number (singular or plural) of a noun. To learn more about the genders of Russian nouns click here.

Let’s take a look at an example:

Imagine that someone is asking about a photo:

he or she probably answered

One more time:

Possessive pronouns in Genitive, Dative, Instrumental and Prepositional cases

To decline the pronouns in these cases, change the endings as follows:

Masculine & Neuter:

мой - моего - моему - моим - моём

Feminine:

моя - моей - моей - моей - моей

Plural:

мои - моих - моим - моими - моих

Let’s also take a look at the sentences with the possessive pronoun наш (our). “This is our home” is translated as “Это наш дом”. But if you want to say that “We are proud of our home” then you have to decline наш as follows: