Possessive Articles: mein, dein, sein

Level: A1. Possessive articles say who something belongs to — my, your, his, her. In German they behave exactly like the indefinite article ein, so if you already know ein/eine, most of the work is done.

The rule

A possessive article (German Possessivartikel) stands in front of a noun and shows the owner: mein Auto (my car), deine Idee (your idea). Each person has its own base word:

• mein — my
• dein — your (one person you know well)
• sein — his / its
• ihr — her / their
• unser — our
• euer — your (several people you know well)
• Ihr — your (polite, always capitalised)

The base word then takes an ending that copies ein/kein. The ending matches the gender, number and case of the noun that comes after it — not the owner. So mein becomes meine before a feminine noun (meine Mutter) and stays mein before a masculine or neuter one (mein Vater, mein Kind).

The possessive base words

The endings (nominative and accusative)

The endings are identical to ein/kein. In the nominative (subject) and accusative (direct object), only the masculine accusative changes:

Example sentences

Common mistakes

• ❌ meine Bruder → ✅ mein Bruder. Bruder is masculine, so no -e in the nominative.
• ❌ mein Schwester → ✅ meine Schwester. Schwester is feminine, so add -e.
• ❌ Ich sehe mein Vater → ✅ Ich sehe meinen Vater. A masculine direct object takes -en in the accusative.
• ❌ ihre Bruder (for “her brother”) → ✅ ihr Bruder. The ending follows Bruder (masculine), not the female owner.
• ❌ euers Auto → ✅ euer Auto. euer keeps its base form before a neuter noun; it does not add -s.

A short conversation

Am Telefon: — Hallo, ist das dein Handy? Ich finde meine Nummer nicht. — Ja, einen Moment. Wie heißt deine Freundin? — Ihre Mutter hat angerufen. Hast du ihre Nummer?

Usage notes

• Case keeps going: beyond the accusative, the dative adds -em/-er/-em/-en (mit meinem Bruder, mit meiner Schwester). At A1 you mainly need the nominative and accusative above.
• sein vs ihr: sein is “his/its” (owner = er/es); ihr is “her/their” (owner = sie). Decide by looking at who owns the thing, then add the ending for the noun.
• Ihr with a capital letter is the polite “your” and is written with a capital I everywhere in the sentence, which is how you tell it apart from lowercase ihr (her/their).

Compared with…

• ein / eine / ein — the indefinite article, whose endings the possessives copy exactly. See Indefinite Articles: ein / eine / ein.
• kein / keine — the negative “no / not a”, another ein-word with the same endings. It appears in the negation lesson.
• der / die / das — the definite articles, whose gender decides every ending here. See German Articles: Der, Die, Das, and note the accusative case for the masculine -en.

Quick recap before the quiz.

Practice

Quiz

Recap cheat-sheet

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