Possessive Adjectives
Possessive Adjectives
Dutch possessives — mijn, jouw, zijn, and the rest — never change for the gender or number of the noun they describe, matching English's own invariant possessives (my, your, his) closely.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
mijn/jouw/zijn/haar stay fixed no matter the noun — just like English
mijn boek (my book) / mijn boeken (my books) — mijn never changes
my book / my books
Every Dutch possessive — mijn, jouw, zijn, haar, ons/onze, jullie, hun — stays exactly the same word whether the noun is de or het, singular or plural: mijn boek and mijn boeken both use mijn. This matches English exactly: 'my' never changes either, regardless of the noun that follows it — genuinely simpler than German or Spanish, where at least one possessive changes form.
ons vs. onze — the one possessive English doesn't have a parallel for
ons huis (our house, het-word) / onze tafel (our table, de-word)
our house / our table
'Our' is Dutch's lone exception: it's ons before a singular het-word, and onze everywhere else (de-words, and all plurals regardless of gender). English 'our' never changes form at all, so this is the one spot where Dutch adds a layer English doesn't have — though it's a far smaller exception than German or Spanish's full possessive-adjective agreement.
zijn also means 'his' — context, not spelling, tells them apart
Jan en zijn boek (Jan and his book) vs. zijn (to be, the infinitive)
Jan and his book
zijn does double duty in Dutch: it's both the possessive 'his' and the infinitive of the verb 'to be'. The two are never confusable in an actual sentence because they occupy completely different grammatical slots — much like English 'his' and 'is' happen to share a root historically but are never actually confused in a sentence either.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| Dutch | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| mijn | mayn | my |
| jouw | yow | your (informal) |
| zijn | zayn | his |
| haar | hahr | her |
| ons / onze | ons / ON-zeh | our |
| hun | huhn | their |