A1 · Pronouns
mijn, jouw, ons, onze: possessive pronouns
possessive pronouns
Topic 19 of 90 · about 8 minutes
Your goal
You can say whose something is with mijn, jouw, ons and onze and know when ons and when onze is right.
Dat is mijn zus.That is my sister.
Waar is je telefoon?Where is your phone?
Joris zoekt zijn sleutels.Joris is looking for his keys.
Done at 8 of 10 · about 4 min
Explainer video
Watch first – then practise
The essentials
Rememberons before a het word, otherwise onze.
No case endings — only ons and onze change, depending on whether a het word follows.
- Signal words
- mijn
- jouw
- je
- uw
- zijn
- haar
- ons
- onze
- jullie
- hun
The form
The forms side by side
All the forms in one overview: first what each one stands for, then the form in Dutch, so you can compare them directly.
| my | mijn |
| your (stressed / unstressed) | jouw / je |
| your (polite) | uw |
| his, its | zijn |
| her | haar |
| our (before a het word, singular) | ons |
| our (before a de word and plural) | onze |
| your (plural) | jullie |
| their | hun |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is about
The possessive pronoun has no case endings.
Ik ga met mijn broer naar mijn oma.I am going with my brother to my gran’s.
ons stands before a het word in the singular.
Ons huis heeft een tuin.Our house has a garden.
onze stands before a de word and before every plural.
Onze buren zijn aardig.Our neighbours are nice.
More rules (2)
je is the quiet form, jouw the stressed one.
Is dit jouw fiets of de mijne?Is this your bike or mine?
hun belongs to several people, haar to one woman.
Lotte en Ruben verkopen hun huis.Lotte and Ruben are selling their house.
Example sentences
6 more example sentences
Noor belt haar moeder.Noor is phoning her mother.
Ons dorp is klein, maar onze school is groot.Our village is small, but our school is big.
Is dat jullie auto?Is that your car?
Mevrouw, is dit uw tas?Madam, is this your bag?
Hun kinderen spelen bij ons.Their children are playing at ours.
Dit is ons nieuwe adres.This is our new address.
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
English “our” never changes, so it is natural to use one form for everything and write onze huis. In Dutch it matters whether a het word in the singular follows: het huis takes ons. Think of ons as the odd one out, not the other way round.
Lesson
The full explanation
Read it all · about 1 min
The possessive pronouns are mijn (my), jouw or je (your), uw (your, polite), zijn (his, its), haar (her), ons or onze (our), jullie (your, several people) and hun (their). Like their English counterparts, they do not change: mijn vader, met mijn vader, mijn ouders — always mijn.
The only form that varies is “our”. Before a het word in the singular it is ons: ons huis, ons kind. Before a de word and before every plural it is onze: onze straat, onze kinderen. It is the same rule as for the adjective ending -e.
jouw and je behave like jij and je: je is the quiet everyday form (Waar is je jas?), jouw the stressed one (Is dit jouw jas of mijn jas?). For things, “its” is zijn: De boom verliest zijn bladeren.
A closer look
de mijne, het mijne: the possessive on its own
When the possessive stands without a noun it takes an article and an -e, as English takes “mine”: Is dit jouw jas of de mijne? The article follows the word meant — de jas, so de mijne; het huis, so het mijne. In conversation people often say more simply die van mij, dat van mij.
Exceptions and special cases1
Exception
When a girl is meant (het meisje)
then in everyday speech it is haar, although the word is a het word: Het meisje zoekt haar tas.
Het meisje speelt met haar hond.The girl is playing with her dog.
Why? With people, natural gender wins over the word group — as in English “the girl and her bag”.
Worth knowing2
Worth knowing
m’n, z’n, d’r
In speech mijn, zijn and haar are often shortened to m’n, z’n and d’r. In chats and casual messages you see that in writing too; in a letter or form you write the full forms.
Ik pak even mijn jas.I’ll just grab my coat.
Worth knowing
Daan z’n fiets: ownership with names
For “Daan’s bike” there are three ways: de fiets van Daan is the usual one, Daans fiets sounds a little written, and Daan z’n fiets is heard in conversation. Dutch writes the -s without an apostrophe after a consonant.
Dat is de fiets van Daan.That is Daan’s bike.
The verbs on this page, in every form: zijn · hebben · gaan · bellen · zoeken · spelen · verkopen
Related topics
- mij, jou, hem, haar: pronouns as object
- u or je: how to address people
- de or het: two words for “the”
- groot or grote: the adjective with and without -e
- deze, die, dit, dat: demonstrative pronouns
Now write it yourself11 sentences on this topic, typed and checked instantly.
Words you will need5
They appear in this topic’s examples and exercises and are new at this point on the learning path.
- aardignice, kind
- mijnmy
- verkopento sell
- de telefoontelephone, phone
- bellento phone; to ring
Missing a word? Look it up in the dictionary