Use French possessive adjectives to say who something belongs to. Possessive adjectives replace articles. In English we would say: MY, YOUR, HIS, HER, OUR and THEIR. Watch my video lesson on possessive adjectives below.
There are more possessive adjectives in French than in English. It all goes back to gender and number, which are always important in French.
When talking about body parts we hardly ever use possessive adjectives. For example, if you want to say “My head hurts” you would say “J’ai mal à la tête”.
If a feminine noun begins with a vowel you have to use the masculine possessive adjective before it.
For example, even though “araignée = spider” is a feminine noun, if it is MY spider I have to say MON araignée so that it will sound pretty when spoken.
The tricky thing about French possessives is that the gender of the noun will determine which adjective needs to be used.
For example, “stylo” is masculine. It’s masculine no matter if it belongs to HIM or HER. That’s why we say SON stylo to mean HIS pen and SON stylo to mean HER pen.
