Spanish Possessives: Mi vs Mío, Su vs Suyo, and Why Spanish Drops the 'My'

A chart of every possessive form, when to use the long form (un amigo mío, es mía, el mío), how to clear up an ambiguous su, and why it is me duele la cabeza, never mi cabeza.

Why do Spanish speakers never say my? The short answer: they do, all day. Mi casa (my house), mi jefe (my boss), ¿has visto mis llaves? (have you seen my keys?). What they skip is the my English puts in front of a head or a wallet. At the farmacia (pharmacy) you say me duele la cabeza, literally "to me hurts the head". After a bad evening on Line 1 of the Madrid metro, it is me robaron la cartera, "they robbed me the wallet".

Then there's mi versus mío. When someone in your building's group chat asks whose bike is on the landing, the answer is es mía. Never es mi.

Every Spanish possessive in one chart

Spanish has two sets of possessives. The short ones sit in front of a noun. The long ones come after a noun, after ser, or with an article in place of the noun.

Watch the accents in the first column. Tu without an accent is "your", tú with one is "you": tú tienes tu llave (you have your key). Mi and mí split the same way: mi piso (my flat), but a mí me gusta (I like it).

What to learn first: the whole first column, vuestro included. With su, context is usually enough; de él, de ella and de usted are for recognizing by ear, and for the moment someone asks you ¿de quién? (whose?).

What does mi, tu, su agree with?

With the thing owned. English his and her follow the person; Spanish su doesn't. Su hija is his daughter or her daughter; sus llaves is his keys or her keys, and the -s is there because there are several keys.

Plural owners change nothing either: nuestra casa (our house) stays feminine whether "we" are two men or a family of five, because casa is feminine.

Only nuestro and vuestro change for gender at all. Mi, tu and su change only for number: mi amiga, mi amigo, mis amigos.

In Spain vuestro is everyday Spanish, even though courses built around Latin American Spanish barely use it. Invite a couple of friends to your kid's birthday party and you'll type ¿venís con vuestros hijos? (are you bringing your kids?) before you've thought about it. The exceptions inside Spain are the Canary Islands and parts of western Andalusia, which, like Latin America, use ustedes for any group and so say su or de ustedes.

When su could be anyone's

Su can mean his, her, its, their, and your (to someone you address as usted). Fui a casa de Laura y de su hermano (I went to Laura and her brother's place) is perfectly clear. Laura y Pablo viven juntos; su coche no ha pasado la ITV (Laura and Pablo live together; the car failed its ITV, Spain's compulsory vehicle inspection) is not: whose car?

Spaniards clear it up by swapping su for the article and adding de + the owner: el coche de ella (her car), el coche de él (his car), el coche de ellos (their car). You'll hear it more than you'll need it; reach for it when the other person asks ¿de quién?

With usted, the extra word is de usted. At the front desk of a centro de salud (public health clinic), where you check in with your tarjeta sanitaria (health card), plenty of staff will simply use tú with you these days. When they don't, the card you left on the counter is su tarjeta, and in a full waiting room, ¿es de usted esta tarjeta? Switching to usted turns every tu in your sentence into su; tú vs usted in Spain covers when to make that switch.

Mi or mío: which one when?

Short forms appear only right before a noun. In three other positions Spanish uses the long form.

After the noun. Un amigo mío is "a friend of mine": one of several, introduced for the first time. Mi amigo assumes the listener already knows which friend. Unos primos míos viven en Gandía (some cousins of mine live in Gandía). Exclamations and terms of endearment use this order too: ¡Dios mío! (my God!), ¡madre mía!, the all-purpose Spanish "oh boy", hijo mío (my son, or just "my dear") and cariño mío (my darling).

After ser. ¿De quién es esta toalla? (whose towel is this?) — Es mía. Never es mi, because mi cannot end a sentence. And mía is feminine because toalla is, even if a man is answering.

With an article, instead of the noun. Tu coche es blanco; el mío es gris (your car is white; mine is gray). El mío is a pronoun: it replaces mi coche so you don't repeat coche. Asked which umbrella in the stand is yours, you point: el mío es el negro (mine is the black one).

Es mío and es el mío answer different questions. Es mío answers "whose is it?": ownership. Es el mío answers "which one is it?": you are picking yours out of several. Pointing at a padlock on a gym locker: este candado es mío (this padlock is mine); picking yours out of a row of identical ones: este es el mío (this one is mine).

Lo mío is "my thing": lo mío no es la cocina (cooking isn't my thing). And los míos is "my people", family or team: en Navidad, con los míos (at Christmas, with my folks).

Suyo behaves like mío: su coche, un coche suyo, es suyo, el suyo. It is as ambiguous as su, and if someone asks, ¿es suyo? becomes ¿es de ella? or ¿es de usted?

Why Spanish says me duele la cabeza, not mi cabeza

With body parts, clothes and the things you carry around, Spanish names the owner once, in a pronoun in front of the verb (me, te, se, le…), and puts a plain article in front of the noun.

• Pain is doler: me duele la espalda (my back hurts), but me duelen los pies (my feet hurt), with a plural verb, because it is the feet doing the hurting.
• Anything you do to your own body, or put on it, takes a reflexive pronoun: me lavo las manos (I wash my hands), se ha roto el brazo (he has broken his arm), se puso el abrigo (she put her coat on), quítate los zapatos (take your shoes off).

Then the things you carry. A friend stops at the metro turnstile, pats every pocket and groans: me he dejado la tarjeta en casa (I've left my travel card at home; in Madrid, the Tarjeta Transporte Público). The me tells you whose card it is.

The me in me duele is the indirect pronoun from me gusta: grammatically the head is the subject, and you are the person it happens to. If gustar already makes sense to you, doler is the same machine with worse news. Me robaron la cartera from the opening puts the victim in the indirect slot, as preguntar (to ask) and pedir (to ask for) do; the full list of verbs like that is in lo, la, le or se.

Sometimes there is no pronoun at all, because the situation already says whose. The dentist says abra la boca (open your mouth), and the only mouth in question is yours.

Then there is cortarse el pelo. Me he cortado el pelo means "I got a haircut", even though the peluquera (hairdresser) held the scissors. A colleague who says ¿te has cortado el pelo? has simply noticed the new haircut; nobody assumes you did it yourself.

When Spanish keeps the my

Me duele mi cabeza will be understood instantly. It just sounds translated, and the Fundéu (the RAE-linked foundation that advises Spanish media on usage) explicitly recommends the article with body parts: se torció el tobillo rather than se torció su tobillo. Describing yourself, too, Spaniards mostly reach for tener (to have) + article: tengo el pelo rizado (I've got curly hair), tiene los ojos verdes (she has green eyes). Mi pelo es rizado is grammatical, but it reads like a line from a form.

The possessive comes back in three cases. People keep it, as in English: mi madre viene en Navidad (my mother is coming at Christmas), mis hijos (my children), mi casero (my landlord). Contrast keeps it even with things: two identical phone chargers on a bar table, and it's ese es el tuyo, este es el mío (that one's yours, this one's mine). And you need it when nothing in front of the verb says whose: Juana miró su mano (Juana looked at her hand), where miró la mano on its own could be anyone's hand.

What to keep

Body and the things on you: pronoun plus article, me duele la cabeza, te has dejado las llaves (you've left your keys behind). People and comparisons: mi, mío, el mío.

Check yourself: mi, mío or the article?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)