Hello, all. Nesse episódio do podcast Inglês Online eu falo sobre as palavrinhas his, hers, theirs, etc. em inglês.

Transcrição

Hello, everyone. Today we have a new episode of the inglesonline podcast. To download or just listen to other episodes and download transcripts, go to inglesonline.com.br and click Podcast Inglesonline.

So there’s a group of words that I’ve written about before: I’m talking about mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs. Ring any bells? These are not your regular possessive adjectives: this is my car, that’s her house, this is our dog… No, this is not what I’m talking about. I’m focusing today on the so-called possessive pronouns, those little words that are usually taught as a group in English classes, and that you do a couple of fill-in-blanks exercises and… that’s it. We can tell that it isn’t enough just by noticing that very few English learners employ them correctly in conversation or in writing.

OK, so just to make sure we’re all on the same page here, these are the possessive pronouns:

mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs

They are obviously used in ways that are different from the way we use my, your, her, our and etc. I’ve written a post about the most common ways we use possessive pronouns in English, so I suggest you take a look – here’s the link. Now, of course just reading about them once or twice isn’t gonna make much of a difference, so I thought I’d use today’s podcast to give you some audio on this topic. So I’m using that post as the basis, and this podcast is going to be all about those little words – to be more specific, and because we have limited time, I’m gonna concentrate on these three: yours, mine, and theirs.

Here’s the first one: imagine you’re at the school cafeteria with your best friend and you’ve both ordered a sandwich. The lady at the cafeteria hands you both your sandwich and your friend says “Hmmm my sandwich is bigger than yours!” What is he saying? He’s saying “My sandwich is bigger than your sandwich”. My sandwich is bigger that yours. “Yours” is the same as “your sandwich”.  “Yours” may also be the same as “your car”, “your bicycle” and “your teacher”. Listen to these examples: “I parked my car just around the corner. Where did you park yours?” Where did you park your car? Where did you park yours?

“I bought my bicycle at Arnie’s bike shop. Where did you buy yours?” Where did you buy your bicycle – where did you buy yours? And how about this one: “Hey, I found this wallet in the restroom. Is it yours?” Is it your wallet? Is it yours?

And then the other person might say “Yep, it’s mine”. Yep, it’s my wallet. Mine means “my wallet”. I found this wallet. Is it yours? Yep, it’s mine. And let’s say you’re in class and Ms. Simpson, the teacher, is handing back exams she graded. You grab one and Ms. Simpson says “That one is Mary’s. Here’s yours” as she hands you your exam. So what happened? You took Mary’s exam by mistake, and Ms. Simpson said “That’s not your exam. That is Mary’s. Here’s yours”. Here’s your exam. Here’s yours.

Now let’s say you’re in a different class… Mr. Thomas is the teacher. He’s just handed back some homework to the students, but you didn’t get anything. Where’s yours?