Russian possessives and свой

The possessive words

Every Russian noun has a gender (masculine, feminine or neuter), usually visible from its last letter. The possessive takes the gender of the thing owned, never of the owner: a woman says мой брат (my brother) and a man says моя́ сестра́ (my sister). The possessive is red throughout this page; tap any form to hear it.

The shaded rows (его́, её, их) are the same in every column. ваш is “your” for several people, or for one person you call вы (polite). See ты and вы.

его́, её, их never change

“His”, “her” and “their” are really the genitive of “he”, “she” and “they”: literally “of him”, “of her”, “of them”. Because they already have a case of their own, they ignore the noun completely, in every gender and every case.

мой, твой, свой, наш, ваш in every case

твой and свой follow мой letter for letter; ваш follows наш. So two tables cover all five words. In the accusative, the masculine and plural forms depend on whether the noun is a thing or a person or animal (the animate rule).

Pronunciation: as in all adjective endings, г in -его is said as v: моего́ is “ma-ye-VO”, на́шего is “NA-she-va”.

свой: “one’s own”

English “his” is ambiguous: in “Ivan took his book”, the book could be Ivan’s or another man’s. Russian keeps the two apart. свой means the book belongs to the subject of the same clause (the person doing the action); его́ then means it belongs to someone else.

Leaving “my” out

English needs a possessive with family, body parts and personal things; Russian leaves it out whenever the owner is obvious. Adding мой in these sentences isn’t ungrammatical, but it sounds emphatic: “my mum, not yours”.

чей? Asking “whose?”

чей (chey) agrees with the thing owned, just like мой. In the answer, the owner can be a possessive (мой) or a noun in the genitive (бра́та, “my brother’s”).

ма́мин, па́пин: “Mum’s”, “Dad’s”

In everyday speech, family words and first names ending in -а or -я can become a possessive adjective with -ин: ма́ма → ма́мин, “Mum’s”. It agrees with the thing owned (-ин, -ина, -ино, -ины). It sounds warm and informal; in writing, use the genitive instead: маши́на ма́мы.

Set phrases with свой

свой also carries the sense of “belonging”, “familiar” or “proper”, and appears in many fixed expressions. These are C1-level and give speech a native feel.

Check yourself

Replace the English word in brackets with the right Russian form. Say the answer out loud, then reveal it.