Possessive pronouns in Yoruba

Possessive pronouns in Yoruba

Welcome back! Today we’re going to be looking at something particularly interesting…possessive pronouns in Yoruba!

Possessive pronouns show you who owns what in a sentence, and to give you a better understanding of them, I’ve displayed some phrases below and underlined the possessive pronouns in them:

My book
Our houses
Your mother
Their father

In today’s lesson I will show you the possessive pronouns of Yoruba AND how to use them in phrases. So to start off, the possessive pronouns of Yoruba are:

Yoruba Possessive pronouns

English	Yoruba
My	Mi
Your	Rẹ/ẹ
Her/His/Its	Rẹ̀/ẹ̀
Our	Wa
You all’s	Yín
Their	Wọn

Take note

As you already know, In English possessive pronouns come before the noun e.g. in the phrase ‘my mother’ the possessive pronoun ‘my’ comes before the noun ‘mother’. However, Yoruba is a little different (got to add a little maggi to the sentences), in Yoruba the possessive pronoun comes after the noun, e.g. in the phrase ‘Màmáa mi’ the possessive pronoun ‘mi’ comes after the noun ‘Màmáa’.

Examples of Yoruba phrases with possessive pronouns

Yoruba	English
Bàbá mi	My father
Màmáa mi	My mother
Ìyàwó rẹ	Your wife
Ọkọ rẹ	Your husband
Ọmọ rẹ	Your child
Ọ̀rẹ́ rẹ̀	His/Her friend
Ìwé rẹ̀	His/Her book
Ilé wa	Our house
Ìwà wa	Our behaviour
Owó yín	You all’s money
Aṣọ yín	You all’s clothes
Olùkọ́ wọn	Their teacher
Kíláàsì wọn	Their class

NB: Sometimes when you read Yoruba words next to possessive pronouns their vowels will be lengthened e.g.

Ilé mi = Ilée mi
Ìwé rẹ = Ìwéè rẹ

I just included that in case you’re wondering why a word such as word ‘ilé’ suddenly has 2 ‘e’s when you are readying a Yoruba book, it’s just vowel lengthening.

Great! Now you know how to use possessive pronouns in Yoruba. If you would like to supercharge your learning, try creating 3 phrases in Yoruba using possessive pronouns.