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Latin from scratch course › #9: Possessives and personal pronouns › #9.18: Possessives

Latin from scratch #9.18: Possessive adjectives/pronouns

In the eighteenth class of the Latin from Scratch course, we’ll study the morphology and syntax of the possessive adjectives/pronouns. This class will have to be expanded with the classes about personal pronouns and demonstratives.

Contents

  • Morphology
  • Syntax

I explain everything in the following video (⏳ 09m 01s ⌛):

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Morphology

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Latin possessives are declined just like any other 2-1-2 adjective, so we just need to know the distribution and the statements:

1st person2nd person3rd person
1 possessormeus, mea, meumtuus, tua, tuumsuus, sua, suum
(see below)
2+ possessorsnoster, nostra, nostrumvester, vestra, vestrum

The vocative is always the same as the nominative, except for meus, mea, meum, whose vocative is mi.

Opsecro te, Olympisce mi, mi pater, mi patrone!

I beg you, my Olympian, my father, my patron!

Syntax

This part is a bit more complicated.

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The first thing we need to know is that Latin uses possessives much less often than English. If the possessor can clearly be deduced from the context, Latin usually omits the possessive.

Quinctius cum patre (suo) adest.

Quinctius is here with his father.

Also, notice that Latin possessives work more like Spanish and romance languages. In English, the possessive agrees with the possessor, but in Latin the possessive agrees with the thing possessed.

Pater tuus hic est, sed mater mea abest.

Your father is here, but my mother isn’t!

The most important and confusing syntactic feature we find in the 3rd person suus, sua, suum, which is always reflexive (it refers to the subject of the sentence).

Gaius patrem suum et matrem suam non amat.

Gaius doesn’t love his father nor his mother.

If we need a non-reflexive 3rd person possessive, we need the genitive of the pronoun is, ea, id.

Regem suspectum habebant pro eius crudelitate.

They had their king respected due to his cruelty.

We’ll learn more about this soon enough, but this is it for now. In the next class we’ll learn personal pronouns!

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Next: Possessive adjectives/pronouns →

Paco Álvarez

About Paco Álvarez

I’m Paco Álvarez, a Spanish classical philologist. For years I’ve been teaching Latin and Greek online to Spanish students. When I saw there was nothing like my AcademiaLatin.com for English-speaking Latin lovers, I decided to create it myself, and that’s how LatinFromScratch.com was born.

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Course content

  1. Quick start
  2. Introduction
  3. Cases and their functions
  4. The five declensions
  5. First declension
  6. Verbal conjugation
  7. Present tense
  8. Second declension
  9. 2-1-2 adjectives
  10. Imperfect past tense
  11. Future tense
  12. Third declension nouns
  13. Third declension adjectives
  14. Perfect past tense
  15. Adverbials of place
  16. Fourth declension
  17. Fifth declension
  18. Pluperfect tense
  19. Possessives
  20. Personal pronouns
  21. Apposition
  22. Predicative complement
  23. Present subjunctive
  24. Imperfect subjunctive
  25. Perfect subjunctive
  26. Perfect future indicative
  27. Pluperfect subjunctive
  28. Syntax of cum
  29. Syntax of ut & ne
  30. Comparison of adjectives
  31. Superlative adjectives
  32. Adverbs from adjectives
  33. Demonstratives
  34. Relative clauses
  35. Passive voice
  36. Deponent verbs
  37. Relative time
  38. Participles: morphology
  39. Participles: syntax
  40. Infinitives
  41. Compounds of sum
  42. Irregular verbs
  43. Imperative

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