Wednesday, April 3, 2024

22.02.24: tuus, tua, tuum; eius

[1] tuus, tua, tuum are used when talking to one person and can be [i] possessive adjectives meaning 'your' or [ii] possessive pronouns meaning 'yours'; like meus, mea and meum, they agree with the gender of the noun, and are usually placed after the noun.

amīcus tuUS: your friend [m]

liber tuUS: your book

amīca tuA: your friend [f]

pecūnia tuA: your money

scūtum tuUM: your shield

It is important to remember when using both meus, mea and meum, and tuus, tua, tuum that these words do not agree with your gender or the gender of the person you are talking to; they are adjectives and agree with the noun to which they refer. You may be male, but your wine is neuter, and, therefore, vinum meUM. The person you are talking to may be female, but the son is male: fīlius tuUS. This is is the same in French: mon fils (my son: mon is masculine because fils is masculine regardless of the gender of the person speaking) and ma fille (my daughter: ma is feminine because fille is feminine regardless of the gender of the person speaking).

You may think that meus / tuus are simply copying the endings of the nouns e.g. gladius meus, avia tua – but they are not. Those will be the endings regardless of the ending of the noun itself. You can see above that liber does not end in -us but it is masculine in gender and, therefore, liber meus.

Similarly, magister meus / tuus: my / your teacher [m]; māter mea / tua: my / your mother

[2] eius can mean either 'his' or 'her(s)' and does not agree with the gender of the noun:

amīcus eius: his / her friend

pecūnia eius: his / her money

aurum eius: his / her gold

As mentioned in an earlier post, meum, tuum and eius can be used to form an alternative way of talking about names which is effectiveely the same as the English construction. Note that nōmen is neuter and the possessive adjectives agree with nōmen and not with the person speaking or being spoken to:

Quid est nōmen tuum? What is your name?

Nōmen meum est ... My name is ...

And we can now add:

Nōmen eius est ... His / her name is ...

Here are some simple sentences. Translate them into English and refer to previous posts to check vocabulary.

Cuius est hic equus? Estne tuus? Minimē, hic equus nōn est meus.

Estne haec puella amīca tua? Ita vērō.

Estne haec fēmina āvia tua?

Estne hoc scūtum tuum? Minimē, scūtum eius est.

Estne amīcus tuus Rōmānus? Minimē, amīcus meus Graecus est.

Estne nōmen tuum Catullus? Nōmen meum nōn est Catullus. Nōmen eius Catullus est.

Quantī cōnstat vīnum tuum?

Quid est nōmen tuum?

Quid est nōmen eius?

Quis est avus tuus?

Estne haec villa tua?

Hicne est frāter tuus?

Estne hic liber tuus?



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