Grammar: Possessives

Formation of Possessives

In Russian, possessive pronouns match the gender, number, and case of the noun they modify. They have the same gender and number as the noun they possess, not the possessor.
Formation of possessives involves the use of possessive pronouns. For example, мой (my) for masculine singular, моя (my) for feminine singular, моё (my) for neuter singular, and мои (my) for plural.
The pronouns твой, свой, ваш, его, её, and их are other examples of the possessive pronouns used to denote his, her, their and your in singular and plural forms accordingly.
In addition to the above, наш (our) in all genders and numbers is used to express collective possession.

Possessive pronouns usually come before the noun they modify. Like adjectives, they also agree with the noun they define in gender, number and case.
There is more flexibility in the position of possessive verbal forms. They can often be found both at the beginning and the end of sentences.
Despite this, traditional and most common usage sees the possessive pronoun placed before the noun.

The possessive pronouns conjugate like regular adjectives and decline to match the gender, case and number of the noun they are associated with.
For instance, мой (my) becomes моего in the genitive case, моему in dative, моим in instrumental, and моём in prepositional.
Note that in the genitive, accusative, and prepositional plural all possessive pronouns end in -их or -них.

When a noun is negated in Russian, the possessive pronoun relating to that noun is omitted, and the noun is placed in the genitive case.
For instance, “I don’t have a book” would be translated as “У меня нет книги”, not using the possessive pronoun моя.