return to main menu
Quick Grammar Reference
P o r t u g u e s e O n l i n e

>>Pronouns > Possessives

When indicating that something belongs to someone, and that someone is represented by a pronoun, you will use a possessive adjective, such as my, your, his, her, our, or their.

A possessive can stand in for any one of the subject pronouns.

Possessives

In most cases, these words are placed before the noun in both Portuguese and English.

These words act as adjectives, so they must match the number and gender of their noun. They are listed above in the order masculine singular (the o or u endings), feminine singular (the a endings), masculine plural (the os or us endings), feminine plural (the as endings). If the noun is the masculine plural nomes names and you wish to state that those names belong to a pronoun eles (they or them), you can quickly form seus nomes or os seus nomes for their names.

The articles o, a, os and as are optional with the possessive adjectives, but are more often used in Portugal than in Brazil. O meu nome my name has the same meaning as meu nome, but is more common in Portugal. Remember to use the right article with the noun.

For obvious reasons, it is best to avoid seu if the context does not already clarify who is referenced. In these cases, you can use the word de of with any one of the corresponding third-person prepositional pronouns. For example, o café dele means his coffee ("the coffee of him") when you're unsure if o seu café will refer to the wrong person, since it can also mean her coffee, your coffee, their coffee, and all of your coffee. De and ele combine to form dele, de and ela form dela, de and eles/elas contract to deles/delas. See the section on describing possession with de for more information.

You can place any one of these possessives after the noun in two scenarios. In a phrase like amor meu, you add emphasis to the possessive, creating something that translates to love of mine rather than my love (meu amor). When using an indefinite article, you should also place these words after the noun, as in uma amiga minha a (female) friend of mine.

When using these words as nouns meaning mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs, you will not need a separate set of pronouns like these English ones. Simply use the appropriate possessive adjective. The phrase é meu means it's mine. If the noun that belongs to this possessive was already mentioned, be sure to reflect its gender: de quem é a mala? - é minha whose bag is this? - it's mine (literally "of whom is the bag? - it's mine").

Finally, there is a similar possessive with four forms (masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, feminine plural) that corresponds to an unknown or unspecified owner. The word whose used directly before a noun translates to cujo, cuja, cujos and cujas. The phrase o homem cuja mala means the man whose bag.