French Possessive Adjectives: mon, ma, mes Chart and Rules

French possessives (my, your, his, her, our, their) sit before the noun and agree with the thing owned, never with the owner. So son livre is his book or her book, and a woman talking about her father still says mon père.

The full table

The whole system on one screen. Find the owner on the left, then pick the column by the noun that follows.

The top three rows have three forms each; the bottom three only two, because notre, votre and leur do not mark gender.

• mon livre, ma maison, mes amis - my book, my house, my friends
• notre livre, notre maison, nos amis - our book, our house, our friends

Agreement with the thing possessed

The possessive copies the gender and number of what is owned. Who owns it does not come into it.

A father and a mother both say mon fils (my son) and ma fille (my daughter): the child's gender decides, not the parent's.

123

1. 1elle
2. 2son chien
3. 3sa voiture

Her dog is son chien and her car is sa voiture: the dog and the car pick the word, not the woman who owns them.

The son / sa ambiguity

Because the noun decides, son, sa and ses mean both his and her.

• Paul aime sa voiture. - Paul loves his car.
• Marie aime son chien. - Marie loves her dog.
• Son livre est ici. - His book is here. / Her book is here.

Most of the time the context settles it. When it really does not, French adds à lui or à elle, or names the owner:

The mon-before-vowel rule

Before a feminine noun that starts with a vowel or a silent h, ma becomes mon (and ta, sa become ton, son). The noun stays feminine; French only wants to avoid two vowels side by side.

The noun is still feminine, so its adjectives still agree: Mon amie est petite. (My friend is small.) Put an adjective that starts with a consonant in front and ma comes back: ma nouvelle école (my new school).

You can hear the link: mon amie is said "mon-na-mee", the n running into the vowel. The plurals do it with a z sound: mes amis ("may-za-mee"), leurs idées.

leur, leurs and the other leur

leur is their with one thing, leurs their with several. The number of owners does not matter.

• leur maison - their house (one house, shared)
• leurs enfants - their children
• Les enfants aiment leur école. - The children love their school.

The object pronoun leur (to them) is a different word. It sits before a verb and never takes an s: Je leur parle. (I speak to them.) A noun after it means the possessive; a verb after it means the pronoun. The pronoun has its own page, French object pronouns.

notre, votre and nôtre, vôtre

The adjectives notre and votre have no accent. With a circumflex, le nôtre and le vôtre are the pronouns ours and yours.

• notre maison - our house
• C'est la nôtre. - It's ours.

A noun straight after it means no accent. The pronouns are on the French possessive pronouns page.

Body parts: French uses the definite article

With parts of the body, French usually says the hand, not my hand, because a pronoun or the verb already shows whose it is.

Je lave mes mains is grammatical but sounds foreign; the article is the native default.

Common mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Learn every family noun with its possessive: mon père, ma mère, mes parents.
2. Say three things a friend owns: son livre, sa voiture, ses clés.
3. Do the drill below, then the French possessive pronouns page.