Talking About What's Yours in German

Expand your vocabulary with our core 2000 words e-book. It's free and packed with essential expressions that you'll use on a daily basis. Start building your vocabulary today. Click the link in the description below to download your free German e-book before it's gone. Do you know how to ask about possession in German? Welcome to 3-step German practice by GermanPod101.com. In this lesson, you'll practice asking about who something belongs to. Let's look at the main dialogue. As you listen, pay attention to how they ask about the topic and how the other person responds. Let's hear it with the English translation. Pay attention to the first sentence. It follows the key speaking pattern you'll learn later in this lesson. Let's look at the sentence pattern. Do you remember how the character said, is that yours? This sentence follows this simple but important pattern. This structure is used to ask whether something belongs to someone. Let's break it down. To be in the present tense meaning is, das meaning this or that. The informal possessive pronoun meaning yours used for do. Literally means, is that yours? Let's also look briefly at how the person replied. Yes, it's mine. This response uses the same pattern but with a statement. In this case, es, it, plus ist, is, plus meins, mein. You can use this pattern with different possessive pronouns. Meine means mine, used for masculine nouns, der. Meine means mine, used for feminine or plural nouns, die. Meins means mine, used for neuter nouns, das. Deiner means yours, used for masculine nouns, der, informal singular, du. Dein means yours, used for feminine or plural nouns, die, informal singular, du. Dein means yours, used for neuter nouns, das, informal singular, du. This structure is very common in everyday German when identifying who owns an item. Now you can use this structure to ask who something belongs to when you're out and about in Germany. Asking, ist das deins? is perfectly normal among friends or peers. With strangers or in formal situations, you'd likely add a brief softener. Notice the formal, ihres, and the polite, entschuldigung, plus vielleicht. Now let's look at some speaking examples. Can you see how the pattern applies here? Let's break it down. This sentence follows the pattern ist das plus possessive pronoun. Ist, the present tense of sein, meaning is, das, meaning this or that, and eures, the possessive pronoun for ihr, meaning yours. Altogether, ist das eures? is that yours? Here's another example. That is his. Let's try one more. Is that hers or his? Another one. No, that is ours. One last example. Is the phone yours or mine? Now you know how to ask about possessions in German. And you can move on to the practice. Bis bald!