Singular Plural
mijn (m'n)
jouw (je)
uw my
your (informal)
your (polite) ons / onze
jullie (je)
uw our
your (informal)
your (formal)
zijn (z'n)
haar
zijn his
her
its hun their
Ons is used before singular neuter nouns, and onze
is used elsewhere (before singular common nouns, and all plural nouns.) Je,
the unstressed form of jouw, is commonly used in spoken and written
Dutch, unless the speaker/writer wants to stress the pronoun. In the plural,
jullie is the norm, unless jullie has already been used in the sentence.
Then je is used to avoid the redundancy. The other unstressed forms
are not commonly written, but are commonly spoken.
Like in English, Dutch possessive adjectives are used in front
of a noun to show possession: mijn boek (my book). There are a few
ways to express the -'s used in English too. -s can be added to proper names
and members of the family: Jans boek (John's book) The preposition
van can be used to mean of: het boek van Jan (the book of John
= John's book) And in more colloquial speech, the unstressed forms in parentheses
above (agreeing in gender and number) can be used in place of the -s: Jan
z'n boek (John's book)
To form the possessive pronouns, add -e to the stressed
forms (except for jullie) and use the correct article. The only way to show
possession with jullie is to use van jou (literally meaning "of
you"), although all the others can be used with van too.
de/het mijne, jouwe, uwe, zijne, hare, onze, hunne (mine,
yours, yours, his/its, hers, ours, theirs)
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Indo-European Languages