Spanish has six grammatical persons (yo, tú, él/ella/usted, nosotros, vosotros, ellos/ellas/ustedes), and the short possessives match them one to one: mi, tu, su, nuestro, vuestro, su. They sit before the noun, they are unstressed, and they agree with the noun they modify — not with the possessor. Mi padre (my father) and mi madre (my mother) both use mi, because mi agrees with padre/madre, not with the person doing the having.
This page is the A1 entry point to possession in Spanish. If you've learned Spanish from Latin American materials, the single most important takeaway is this: in Spain, vuestro is mandatory when addressing a group of people informally. Saying su casa to your friends sounds either formal and distant or distinctly Latin American — neither one is what you want when you're sharing a flat with three people in Madrid.
The six forms
| Person | Short possessive | English equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 1sg (yo) | mi / mis | my |
| 2sg informal (tú) | tu / tus | your |
| 3sg, 2sg formal (él/ella/usted) | su / sus | his / her / your (formal) |
| 1pl (nosotros/-as) | nuestro / nuestra / nuestros / nuestras | our |
| 2pl informal (vosotros/-as) — PENINSULAR | vuestro / vuestra / vuestros / vuestras | your (plural, informal) |
| 3pl, 2pl formal (ellos/ellas/ustedes) | su / sus | their / your (formal plural) |
Two agreement patterns are at work here, and they trip up learners in different ways.
Agreement rules
Rule one — mi, tu, su agree only in number, not in gender. The form is the same whether the noun is masculine or feminine.
Mi padre vive en Sevilla.
My father lives in Seville. (masculine noun, 'mi')
Mi madre vive en Bilbao.
My mother lives in Bilbao. (feminine noun, still 'mi')
Mis hermanos son mayores que yo.
My brothers are older than me. (plural)
Mis amigas trabajan en Barcelona.
My female friends work in Barcelona. (plural feminine, but the form is still just 'mis')
The same pattern applies to tu/tus and su/sus. So tu coche, tu casa, tus coches, tus casas — only the singular/plural distinction shows.
Rule two — nuestro and vuestro agree in both gender and number. They have four forms each.
Nuestro coche es nuevo.
Our car is new. (masculine singular)
Nuestra casa está en las afueras.
Our house is on the outskirts. (feminine singular)
Nuestros vecinos son muy simpáticos.
Our neighbours are very nice. (masculine plural)
Nuestras hijas estudian en Madrid.
Our daughters study in Madrid. (feminine plural)
The asymmetry — mi/tu/su with only two forms, nuestro/vuestro with four — is a quirk of Spanish historical morphology. Mi and tu come from Latin meum/meam and tuum/tuam, but the gender contrast wore down to a single form. Nuestro and vuestro preserved the contrast because their endings (-o/-a) remained perceptually distinct. There is no logic to memorise; the asymmetry is just how the system works.
The peninsular vuestro you cannot skip
Spain still distinguishes plural address between informal and formal. Vosotros is the plural of tú — you use it with friends, family, classmates, kids. Ustedes is reserved for formal situations: addressing strangers in a business setting, customers, older people you don't know well, official contexts. The two have different verb endings and different possessive forms.
The possessive for vosotros is vuestro/vuestra/vuestros/vuestras. In Spain, you will use it constantly.
Niños, recoged vuestros juguetes antes de cenar.
Kids, pick up your toys before dinner.
Chicas, ¿tenéis vuestros teléfonos a mano?
Girls, do you have your phones handy?
Padres, no olvidéis vuestras chaquetas en el coche.
Parents, don't forget your jackets in the car.
¿Cómo se llama vuestra perra?
What's your dog's name? (asking a couple)
¿Habéis terminado ya vuestro proyecto?
Have you finished your project? (asking a group of students)
If you are a Spanish learner who picked up the language from Mexican telenovelas, Colombian YouTube videos, or American university textbooks, vuestro will feel unfamiliar — Latin America has dropped the vosotros/ustedes distinction, using ustedes for both formal and informal plural address, and the possessive is uniformly su. In Spain, defaulting to su in informal contexts creates a clear mismatch with how people actually talk.
The su ambiguity
The form su covers five different possessors: él, ella, usted, ellos, ellas, ustedes. In writing, su casa could mean "his house, her house, your (formal) house, their house, your (formal plural) house." Context usually resolves it, but when ambiguity matters, peninsular speakers disambiguate by replacing the possessive with de + pronoun.
Su casa está en Toledo.
Their/his/her/your house is in Toledo. (ambiguous in isolation)
La casa de él está en Toledo.
His house is in Toledo. (explicitly masculine third-person singular)
La casa de usted está en Toledo.
Your house is in Toledo. (formal singular addressee)
La casa de ellos está en Toledo.
Their house is in Toledo.
The de + pronoun construction sounds slightly more formal and is reserved for moments when ambiguity would genuinely cause confusion. In most contexts, su is fine and context-disambiguated.
Position and stress
Short possessives are atonic (unstressed) — the prosodic stress sits on the noun they modify, not on the possessive itself. Compare:
- mi PADRE (stress on padre)
- el padre MÍO (long-form possessive, post-nominal, stressed)
This stress pattern is why the short possessives are sometimes called posesivos átonos in Spanish grammars. The contrast with the tonic (stressed) long forms — mío, tuyo, suyo, nuestro, vuestro, suyo — is functional: short forms identify, long forms emphasise or contrast.
Position is pre-nominal, before any adjectives in the noun phrase:
Mi mejor amigo se llama Diego.
My best friend is called Diego.
Vuestra nueva profesora es muy maja.
Your new teacher is really nice.
Nuestros viejos vecinos se han mudado.
Our old neighbours have moved.
Incompatibility with the definite article
Short possessives and the definite article compete for the same slot in the noun phrase. You cannot stack them.
❌ El mi libro.
Wrong — article and short possessive cannot co-occur pre-nominally.
✅ Mi libro.
My book.
✅ El libro mío.
My book. (long-form possessive, post-nominal — both elements grammatical)
The article + long-form construction (el libro mío) is grammatical but carries a contrastive flavour: "the book that is mine, as opposed to yours." Default unmarked possession uses the short form alone (mi libro).
Inalienable possession: when you don't use a possessive
Spanish has a strong preference for definite articles (not possessives) with body parts, clothing, and other inalienable possessions, especially when the action is reflexive or the possessor is clear from context.
Me lavo las manos antes de comer.
I wash my hands before eating. (Spanish uses 'las', not 'mis'.)
Se ha roto el brazo jugando al fútbol.
He broke his arm playing football.
Quítate la chaqueta, hace calor aquí.
Take off your jacket, it's hot in here.
Le duele la cabeza desde anoche.
His/her head has been hurting since last night.
The English-trained instinct produces ❌me lavo mis manos, which is grammatical but markedly non-native — Spanish speakers will hear it immediately. The clitic pronoun (me, te, le, nos, os, les) already identifies the possessor, so the possessive becomes redundant.
The dedicated page on possessives-vs-articles covers this in more depth; for the short-form possessives, the rule of thumb is: with body parts and personal items in a reflexive or interest-related action, drop the possessive and use the definite article.
Pluralisation and apocope traps
The short possessives don't apocopate the way some determiners do (algún, ningún, buen). Mi, tu, su stay the same before vowels and consonants, masculine and feminine, before adjectives or nouns.
But there is one persistent error: confusing tu (possessive) with tú (pronoun). The accent matters.
| Form | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|
| tu (no accent) | short possessive "your" | tu casa |
| tú (accent) | subject pronoun "you" | tú vienes |
| mi (no accent) | short possessive "my" | mi casa |
| mí (accent) | prepositional pronoun "me" | para mí |
This is diacritic accent (tilde diacrítica) — the same sequence of letters but a different word, distinguished only by the accent mark. The accent is mandatory; omitting it in writing is a real spelling error, not a stylistic choice.
Tu hermano vive contigo, ¿no?
Your brother lives with you, right? (possessive: no accent)
Tú no me dijiste nada.
You didn't tell me anything. (pronoun: accent)
Mi coche está en el garaje.
My car is in the garage. (possessive)
A mí me gusta el cine.
I like the cinema. (prepositional pronoun)
A note on the long forms
The short possessives have stressed counterparts: mío, tuyo, suyo, nuestro, vuestro, suyo. These appear post-nominally (or as predicates) and agree in both gender and number. They will get their own page; for now, the contrast to remember is:
Es mi coche.
It's my car. (short, pre-nominal, neutral)
El coche es mío.
The car is mine. (long, predicative, emphasises ownership)
Un amigo mío me lo contó.
A friend of mine told me. (long, post-nominal, partitive — 'one of my friends')
You cannot use the short form in any of those positions. ❌Es mi, ❌el coche es mi, ❌un amigo mi — all impossible. The short forms only work pre-nominally, glued tightly to a noun.
A peninsular family conversation
To illustrate the system in motion, here is a short fragment of the kind of conversation that happens in every Spanish household:
—Mamá, ¿has visto mis llaves? —No, hijo. Mira en tu chaqueta o en el bolsillo de tus pantalones.
—Mom, have you seen my keys? —No, son. Look in your jacket or in the pocket of your trousers.
—Niños, ¿dónde están vuestros zapatos? —En nuestra habitación, mamá.
—Kids, where are your shoes? —In our room, Mom.
—Marta, ¿esta es tu mochila? —Sí, es mi mochila vieja. La nueva la tengo en el coche.
—Marta, is this your backpack? —Yes, it's my old backpack. I've got the new one in the car.
Every short possessive here is doing its job: pre-nominal, agreeing with the noun, unstressed, with the peninsular vuestro surfacing whenever the speaker addresses more than one person informally.
Common Mistakes
❌ Chicos, ¿dónde están sus mochilas?
Wrong in peninsular Spanish — addressing kids with 'vosotros' requires 'vuestras', not 'sus'. 'Sus' here sounds formal or Latin American.
✅ Chicos, ¿dónde están vuestras mochilas?
Boys, where are your backpacks?
❌ Nuestro casa es pequeña.
Wrong — 'casa' is feminine, so 'nuestro' must become 'nuestra'.
✅ Nuestra casa es pequeña.
Our house is small.
❌ Me lavo mis manos.
Marked — Spanish prefers the definite article with body parts when the possessor is clear from the reflexive pronoun.
✅ Me lavo las manos.
I wash my hands.
❌ El mi padre trabaja en un hospital.
Wrong — definite article and short possessive cannot stack pre-nominally.
✅ Mi padre trabaja en un hospital.
My father works in a hospital.
❌ Esa es mio.
Wrong — 'mio' is the long form and requires a clear referent and a post-nominal or predicative position. Without the accent, 'mio' is also misspelled; the correct long form is 'mío'.
✅ Esa es mía.
That one is mine. (long form agreeing with a feminine referent, e.g. 'esa moto')
Key takeaways
- The six short possessives match the six grammatical persons: mi, tu, su, nuestro, vuestro, su.
- Mi, tu, su agree only in number (mi/mis). Nuestro, vuestro agree in both gender and number (four forms each).
- In peninsular Spanish, vuestro/-a/-os/-as is mandatory for informal plural address. Defaulting to su sounds formal or Latin American.
- Su is ambiguous (his/her/your-formal/their/your-formal-plural). Disambiguate with de + pronoun (la casa de él, de usted, de ellos) when context isn't enough.
- Short possessives are pre-nominal and atonic — the stress sits on the noun.
- Short possessives and the definite article cannot stack: ❌el mi libro. Use mi libro or the long form el libro mío.
- With body parts and clothing, Spanish prefers the definite article + clitic, not the possessive: me duele la cabeza, not ❌me duele mi cabeza.
- Mind the diacritic accent: tu (possessive) vs tú (pronoun), mi (possessive) vs mí (pronoun).
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