Questions & Answers about El terreno es mío, no tuyo.
Why use mío and tuyo here instead of mi and tu?
Mi (my) and tu (your) are short possessives that must go directly before a noun, like mi terreno. Here, we need the long-form possessives mío (mine) and tuyo (yours) because they stand on their own after the verb. Do mío and tuyo change depending on the gender of the person speaking?
No, they always match the thing that is owned! Because el terreno is a masculine singular noun, both words must be masculine and singular (mío, tuyo). If you were talking about a house (la casa), the sentence would be: La casa es mía, no tuya. Why isn't there an el before mío or tuyo?
When you use these long-form possessives directly after the verb ser (like es) to state who owns something, you drop the article (el, la, etc.). You just say es mío. You would only use el mío if you were replacing the noun entirely, like saying El mío es grande (Mine is big). Why do we use es instead of está for ownership?
We always use the verb ser (here, es) to express ownership. Even if you might sell the land one day, ownership is considered a defining fact about the object in Spanish, so estar is never used for this. Learn El terreno es mío, no tuyo and more in Spanish
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