Most German possessives — mein, dein, sein, ihr — are one tidy syllable, so adding case endings is mechanical: mein → meine, meinen, meinem. But two of them, unser (our) and euer (your, plural informal), end in a second syllable -er, and that extra -e- is what causes trouble. When you tack on an ending, German doesn't like three weak -e- sounds piling up in a row, so the stem -e- gets squeezed out. This page is about exactly when and why that happens, and how to stop writing the over-stuffed forms eueren and unseres that mark you instantly as a learner.
The core problem: a vowel that wants to disappear
unser and euer are not irregular in any deep grammatical sense — they take the same ein-word endings as every other possessive. The difficulty is purely phonetic and orthographic. The stem already carries an unstressed -e- in its final syllable, and German strongly resists the sequence -e-e- across that boundary.
For euer the rule is firm: the stem -e- drops whenever an ending is added.
| Form | Status |
|---|---|
| euer Haus | no ending → full stem kept |
| eure Wohnung | ending added → middle -e- dropped (not euere) |
| euren Freund | ending added → eur- + en (not eueren) |
| eurem Lehrer | ending added → eur- + em (not euerem) |
| eures Kindes | ending added → eur- + es (not eueres) |
Euer Auto steht im Weg — könnt ihr es wegfahren?
Your car is in the way — can you move it?
Ich habe eure Nachricht erst heute gelesen.
I only read your message today.
Habt ihr euren Hund schon vom Tierarzt abgeholt?
Have you picked up your dog from the vet yet?
Notice the first example: Euer Auto keeps the full euer because the neuter nominative takes a zero ending — there is nothing to attach, so nothing is dropped. The moment an ending appears (eure, euren), the stem collapses to eur-.
unser: the looser sibling
unser plays by a gentler version of the same rule. Here dropping the -e- is optional, and standard written German more often keeps it. So the full forms are perfectly correct and indeed the default:
| Full form | Compressed variant |
|---|---|
| unser Haus | — (no ending, nothing to compress) |
| unsere Wohnung | unsre Wohnung |
| unseren Freund | unsren / unsern Freund |
| unserem Lehrer | unserm Lehrer |
| unseres Kindes | unsres Kindes |
Both unsere and unsre are accepted; unsere is the safe everyday default in writing, while the compressed unsre, unsern, unserm lean literary or regional and turn up in poetry, song lyrics, and elevated prose where the rhythm benefits from a shorter syllable count.
Unsere Tochter fängt nächste Woche mit der Schule an.
Our daughter starts school next week.
Wir haben unseren Nachbarn das Paket gegeben.
We gave the package to our neighbors.
Gib uns heute unser tägliches Brot.
Give us this day our daily bread.
The last example — the Lord's Prayer — shows why unser Brot keeps its full shape: neuter accusative Brot takes a zero ending, so there is no -e- clash to resolve.
Why this is exactly the teuer rule
Here is the insight that makes the whole thing click: euer behaves like the adjective teuer (expensive). German has a small family of -er and -el adjectives — teuer, dunkel, edel, sauer — that drop their stem -e- before an ending for the same anti-clash reason:
| Base | Predicate (no ending) | Attributive (with ending) |
|---|---|---|
| teuer | Das Auto ist teuer. | ein teures Auto (not teueres) |
| dunkel | Der Raum ist dunkel. | ein dunkler Raum |
| euer | Das Auto ist euer. | eure Sache (not euere) |
So euer is not a special little exception you have to memorize on its own. It obeys the same phonological economy as a whole class of German words: an unstressed -e- in the final stem syllable evaporates the instant a vowel-initial ending arrives. Once you see eure and teure as the same phenomenon, you stop treating the possessive as a quirk and start predicting the form. (For the full adjective version of this rule, see the page on adjective stem changes.)
Das ist eure Entscheidung, nicht meine.
That's your decision, not mine.
Ein teures Geschenk ist nicht immer ein gutes Geschenk.
An expensive gift isn't always a good gift.
Contrast with English
English possessives don't change shape at all — our and your are frozen, whatever follows them: our car, our house, our friends, with our teacher. There is simply no English phenomenon to transfer here, which is precisely why English speakers find the German behaviour invisible: they write euer once, learn it, and then never adjust it. The leap is to internalise that German possessives are inflected words that agree in case, gender, and number with the noun, and that euer and unser carry an extra structural vowel that has to be managed when those endings appear.
There is also a meaning trap baked into the spelling: lowercase euer is the informal-plural "your," while the formal "your" is Ihr, capitalised, identical in inflection to ihr (her/their). Don't let the -er of euer lure you into using it as a polite form.
Common Mistakes
❌ Habt ihr eueren Lehrer gefragt?
Incorrect — euer keeps the middle -e- before an ending.
✅ Habt ihr euren Lehrer gefragt?
Did you ask your teacher?
❌ Das ist eueres Problem, nicht unseres.
Incorrect — eueres is not a word; the stem -e- must drop.
✅ Das ist euer Problem, nicht unseres.
That's your problem, not ours.
❌ Wir lieben unser neue Wohnung.
Incorrect — accusative feminine needs the -e ending: unsere.
✅ Wir lieben unsere neue Wohnung.
We love our new apartment.
❌ Ich gebe das Buch eueren Kindern.
Incorrect — dative plural is euren (stem -e- dropped), not eueren.
✅ Ich gebe das Buch euren Kindern.
I'm giving the book to your children.
❌ Kann ich euer Adresse haben?
Incorrect — feminine Adresse needs an ending, so euer must become eure.
✅ Kann ich eure Adresse haben?
Can I have your address?
The thread running through all five errors is the same: as long as the noun's slot has a real ending, euer has to slim down to eur-. The only place the full euer survives is the zero-ending slots — masculine and neuter nominative, and neuter accusative — exactly where mein would also appear bare (mein Auto, euer Auto).
Key Takeaways
- euer drops its middle -e- before every ending: eure, euren, eurem, eures. The forms eueren, euerem, eueres do not exist.
- euer survives intact only in zero-ending slots: masculine/neuter nominative and neuter accusative (euer Auto).
- unser may drop the -e- but usually keeps it: unsere is the safe written default; unsre, unsern, unserm are literary or regional compressions.
- It's the teuer rule. euer/eure works exactly like teuer/teure — an unstressed stem -e- vanishes when a vowel-initial ending is attached.
- Don't confuse informal euer with formal capitalised Ihr.
Now practice German
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Start learning German→Related Topics
- Possessive Determiners (mein, dein, sein, ihr...)A1 — The possessive determiners are ein-words whose stem is chosen by the owner but whose ending agrees with the thing owned — two independent agreements English never makes.
- Possessive Pronouns (meiner, deiner, seins...)B1 — When a possessive stands alone instead of before a noun, it takes strong der-word endings — because now nothing else carries the case and gender.
- Adjective Stem Changes: hoch, dunkel, teuerB1 — The small set of adjectives whose stem shifts when an ending is added — hoch loses its -c-, and -el/-er adjectives drop the -e- — and why this only happens in the attributive form.
- Determiners: der-words and ein-wordsA2 — The two determiner families that drive German adjective endings — der-words decline like the definite article, ein-words like ein, and each triggers its own adjective pattern.