Possessive pronouns are stand-alone words that both represent the possessed
object and the owner.
They include, in English:
mine,
yours,
hers and
theirs.
Usage is the same as in English.
For example:
Which car is better?... Yours
and similarly:
Whose house is that? Hers.
The genitive is a noun in its own right. It
can take all other ending
(except é again)
and can be applied to all nouns (execpt the plural forms, when you have to use a
special plural, see below).
Take care, because in English some possessive modifers are the same as the
stand-alone possessive pronouns: his
can be used in the context of "that's his car" and
That car is his. This page discusses the latter. I will therefore use "hers" to avoid ambiguity, but of course
it is gender-irrelevant.
In Hungarian these words are listed below, but don't forget to include the article!
Here are some examples of possessive pronouns at work.
-
Ez a kutya az enyém
This dog is mine
-
Ezek a kutyák az enyéim
These dogs are mine
-
Melyiket akarod?
Which do you want?
-
A tiedet
(I want) yours
-
Az övéiket
(I want) thiers
A good way of remembering that it serves the dual role of
possessor and possessed item is to look at the following:
-
az én könyvem
gives
az enyém
-
a te könyved
gives
a tied
-
az ő könyve
gives
az övé
-
a mi könyvünk
gives
a mienk
-
a ti könyvetek
gives
a tietek
-
az ő(k)*
könyvük
gives
az övék
That is, we take the nominative
form for the possessor and the external possessive form of the owned
object and (kind of) combine them to get these pronouns.
* Note - az ő(k) könyvük. The correct Hungarian is az ő könyvük
but I keep in the plural -k to clarify the point about matching owner and ownee.
See the explanation here: single possession.