Possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs

When something belongs to someone, or is simply connected with them, you don't always need to name it twice. Instead of saying That is my bag, you can simply say That bag is mine. The word mine stands in for my bag, so you avoid repeating the noun. These stand-alone words — mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs — are the possessive pronouns.

The key idea is short: a possessive pronoun replaces my / your / etc. + noun (my bag → mine), so you don't put a noun straight after it.

Quick shortcut: if a noun comes after the word, use my / your / our… (✅ my book). If no noun follows, use mine / yours / ours… (✅ That book is mine).

Two families that look alike

English has two groups of "belonging" words — used for ownership and for relationships alike (my sister, her turn) — and learners often mix them up because they sound similar.

• Possessive adjectives (also called possessive determiners): my, your, his, her, its, our, their. These come before a noun: my car, their house.
• Possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs. These replace the noun and stand alone: The car is mine.

Here they are side by side, with the subject pronoun for reference:

Notice that his is the same in both columns (his book / That book is his). The others change shape.

A few quick points about the table:

• For it, we use its + noun (The dog hurt its leg), but we don't normally use its on its own as a stand-alone pronoun in everyday English.
• Use his for a male owner and hers for a female owner. The word matches the owner, not the thing owned: The bag is his / The bag is hers.
• Yours can mean one person or more than one: Is this yours, Anna? / Are these seats yours, Anna and Marco? In the same way, theirs usually points to more than one owner, but it can also stand for a single person when you don't want to say his or hers.

How to use them

Use a possessive pronoun when it's already clear what you're talking about, so naming the thing again would just repeat it:

• Is this your coat? — Yes, it's mine.
• Your tea is hot; mine is cold.
• Their garden is big, but ours is bigger.
• I found my keys, but she can't find hers.

A very common pattern is noun + be + possessive pronoun, used to say who owns something:

• This phone is yours.
• Those seats are theirs.
• The red notebook is hers.

No noun after a possessive pronoun

This is the rule that makes the whole topic click: a possessive pronoun already contains the meaning of my / your / etc. + noun, so you don't put a noun straight after it.

• ✅ That book is mine. / ✅ That is my book.
• ❌ That book is my. / ❌ That is mine book.

So my, your, our… go before a noun, and mine, yours, ours… don't take a noun directly after them. (You may later meet phrases like a friend of mine, where the pronoun still isn't modifying a following noun — but at A2 the simple pattern That book is mine covers almost everything.)

A note on "whose"

To ask who owns something, use whose:

• Whose bag is this? — It's mine.
• Whose keys are these? — They're hers.

Take care not to confuse whose (belonging to whom) with who's (= who is): Whose phone is ringing? but Who's calling?

Common mistakes

• ❌ This is mine book. → ✅ This is my book. / ✅ This book is mine.
• ❌ The blue car is my. → ✅ The blue car is mine.
• ❌ Their's is over there. → ✅ Theirs is over there. (no apostrophe)
• ❌ Is this your's? → ✅ Is this yours? (no apostrophe)
• ❌ Her house is bigger than my. → ✅ Her house is bigger than mine.

Possessive pronouns never take an apostrophe: yours, hers, ours, theirs, never ❌ your's, her's. (In it's and who's the apostrophe marks a contraction — it is / who is — which is a different thing entirely.)

Quick check

Choose the correct word:

1. Is this jacket yours / your?
2. My / Mine sister lives in Rome.
3. We love our flat, but theirs / their is nearer the sea.
4. That isn't your umbrella — it's mine / my.
5. Whose / Who's turn is it?

Key takeaways

• Possessive pronouns — mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs — replace a noun so you don't repeat it.
• A noun follows my / your / our… (✅ my book), but nothing follows mine / yours / ours… (✅ That book is mine).
• His looks the same in both uses; the others change (her → hers, our → ours).
• They never take an apostrophe: yours, not ❌ your's.
• Use whose to ask who something belongs to — and don't confuse it with who's (who is).