Hiya everyone! How are you doing?
I hope you’ve had an amazing start of the year and that you achieve all the goals you set for yourselves this year!
As you very well know, one of my main goals is to build a community that will reach more avid language learners like me, and people who share other interests; I’m aware that it may take time, but for the time being, I’ll keep doing my best to help you in your learning process.
Today’s topic is “Possessive adjectives”.
What are the possessive adjectives?
Possessive adjectives are words that we use to describe:
- In relation to objects (tangible / intangible): ownership or that something belongs to us.
- In relation to people: the relationship that we share with someone.
Each personal pronoun has a corresponding possessive adjective that we can use:
How to use the possessive adjectives?
As mentioned above, possessive adjectives can be used to describe ownership of an object, or a relationship with another person, but the P.A. focuses particularly in the person that holds the ownership or relation, instead of the object.
Ownership
Let’s take into consideration the following conversation:
Henry: Hello Meg! Can you lend me your pen?
Meg: Hi Henry, sure, I can lend it to you.
Henry: Thanks! I thought your pen was blue…
Meg: No, my pen is purple. The blue one is of the teacher.
As you can see, the kids are talking about two pens, one blue and one purple, however, the possessive adjectives focus on the person who owns the pen Henry wants, in this case, Meg’s purple pen. When we talk about objects, these can be tangible (that we can touch them, like a pen, a coin, a computer, etc.) or intangible (a job, time, health, etc.).
Here you have some examples:
- I like my new car.
- You don’t like people wasting your time.
- Alice is very good in her job.
- Erick has some problems with his health.
- The dog doesn’t like its new toys.
- We can’t fail our exams!
- They will obtain their visas to go to Japan.
Relationships
As for relationships, the use of the possessive adjectives is the same: the P.A. focuses on the person that holds the relationship to the other person; here you have some examples:
- I love my mother.
- Dalia and her boyfriend are very nice people.
- Ernest looks a lot like his brother.
- Kiernan and Dory love their parents very much.