To talk about possession or relationship in Spanish, we use preposition de, equivalent to how English uses ‘s, for example: La casa de Ana. meaning Ana’s house. In a previous post, we discussed all about indicating possession using Spanish possessive adjectives like mi meaning my, tu meaning your, and su meaning his/hers/its and possessive pronouns like el mio meaning mine, el tuyo meaning yours, and el suyo meaning his/hers/its. However, talking about possession using preposition de is particularly useful when we want to clarify or emphasize who the owner of the object is! Let’s check it out!
Ownership with preposition ‘de’
In English, when we talk about possession we use an “apostrophe ‘s’” on the word that indicates the owner of an object: “Maria’s cat,” or to indicate relationship: “Maria’s sister.” In Spanish, we use the preposition de, in the following formula:
The preposition de in Spanish is one of the most frequent prepositions. To learn more about its other uses check out our post on the most common prepositions in Spanish.
Use ‘ser’ to indicate ownership/relationship
When we want to express possession or relationship in a sentence, we use the verb ser meaning to be + preposition de:
In negative sentences, we insert the word no before the verb:
Ese perro no es de Laura.Translation: That dog isn’t Laura’s.In questions, we place the preposition de before the question word:
¿De quién es esa mochila?Translation: Whose backpack is that?Es del chico argentino.Translation: It belongs to the Argentinian guy.
The case of the third person possessive adjectives or pronouns
In Spanish, to talk about “his,” “her,” “your” (formal), “its,” “your” (plural), or “their” we only have the possessive adjective su or sus. Because these forms can have many meanings, we often use the possessive construction with de + prepositional pronoun to avoid confusion:
| Singular Pronouns | Plural Pronouns |
|---|---|
de ella meaning hers | de ustedes meaning your (plural) |
de él meaning his | de ellos meaning their |
de usted meaning your (formal) | de ellas meaning their |
For example:
Sometimes you may need to clarify your message when talking about a
third-person singular or plural, and you may even need to use the name of the person in case you want to be very clear:
In the first example we use the possessive adjective su, but it isn’t clear if we’re talking about Felipe or María’s birthday. To clarify this, we can use the possessive construction with preposition de:
Or, we can specify who we’re talking about by referring to their name:
The same is true for the long possessive adjective or pronoun suyo or suyos, because it can mean “his,” “hers,” “yours,” “its,” or “theirs.” When we need to clarify or even emphasize to whom the object belongs, we use the possessive construction with the preposition de.
In this case, suyo can be replaced by de and a prepositional pronoun to clarify the owner of the notebook.
In conclusion
In Spanish there are two ways to show possession: we can use the possessive adjectives and pronouns, or we can use the possessive construction with preposition de. Remember that this construction with de is particularly useful to clarify who su/sus or suyo/suyos refers to, since they don’t show gender! And this, my friends, is the one time you’ll get a pass on gender in Spanish!
Ready to practice? Here’s an exercise to practice both ways to talk about possession in Spanish!
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