Possessive Adjectives (My, Your, His/Her, Our, Their)

Italian possessive adjectives and pronouns — mio, tuo, suo, nostro, vostro, loro — let you say whose something is, and they behave a little differently from their English counterparts. The most striking feature is that possessives agree in gender and number with the thing possessed, not with the possessor. So mio libro is my book (masculine), but mia casa is my house (feminine), and miei amici is my friends (masculine plural). This is the opposite of what English does (his vs. her depends on the owner, not the object), and it takes a bit of practice to rewire.

The second big surprise is that Italian possessives almost always take a definite article in front: il mio libro, la tua casa, le nostre amiche, i loro figli. Loro is invariable — it never changes form — but the article in front of it does change (il loro libro, la loro casa, i loro figli, le loro case). There's one important exception to the article rule: with singular, unmodified family members, you drop the article. You say mia madre, tuo padre, suo fratello, mia sorella — not la mia madre. Once the family member is plural (i miei fratelli), modified by an adjective (la mia sorella maggiore), or is loro (la loro madre), the article comes back.

The third thing worth knowing is that suo/sua/suoi/sue covers his, her, and your (formal — Suo, capitalized) — all three. Context usually makes the meaning clear, but when it doesn't, Italians add di lui or di lei to disambiguate (il libro di lui vs. il libro di lei). For your learning, practice thinking of suo as "the possessor is he/she/Lei, and the object is masculine singular" — and so on for the other forms. This feels awkward at first because English forces a choice between his and her based on the possessor, while Italian forces a choice based on the thing possessed.

Possessive pronouns (the ones that stand alone, like mine, yours, his) look exactly the same as possessive adjectives in Italian — Questa è la mia macchina, quella è la tua (This is my car, that one is yours). The only difference is whether a noun follows. You can also use possessives without any article in fixed expressions like a casa mia (at my place) and in vita mia (in my life), which are useful phrases to pick up early. The exercises below cover all six possessors, the article rule, the family exception, and the suo ambiguity. By the end, talking about your family and other people's stuff should feel natural, and you'll avoid the classic mio vs. mia and with-or-without-article mistakes that trip up most beginners.