If tu is you in Spanish how do you say your in Spanish?

Answer 1

Answer

It depends on two things: 1) who statement is addressed to and the number and 2) the noun gender of the object.

In Spanish, there are different ways of saying 'you':

• 'tú' is the informal, singular personal pronoun (use this, for example to family members, friends and most people your own age or younger)
• 'vosotros' ('vosotras' if talking to a group of exclusively girls or women) is the informal, plural pronoun and is used when talking to a group of people. (This is the case for Peninsular Spanish, that is, the variety spoken in Spain. I believe that 'usted' is used in most of Spanish-speaking Latin America, apart from Argentina, which uses 'vos' and a different verb form).
• 'usted' is the polite, singular form, used when talking to someone you don't know very well or someone you're trying to be polite to such as a friend's older relatives (this is becoming less common, 'tú' is very widespread in Spain).
• 'ustedes' is the polite plural form (again, Latin America has its own rules, if someone could specify examples from where they live or have travelled to that'd be useful.)

The possessive adjective ('your', in this case) thus depends on the addressee as detailed in the above categories. Each has a corresponding possessive:

• 'tu' corresponds to 'tú' (though they're pronounced the same, the accent is just for differentiation in writing)
• 'vuestro' corresponds to 'vosotros'
• 'su' corresponds to 'usted' and 'ustedes'

The ending of the Spanish word 'your' depends on the number and gender of the following noun, so the possessive for 'your brother' is different to that for 'your brothers'. For all 3 of the above categories just add an 's':

• 'tu hermano' ('your brother'), 'tus hermanos' ('your brothers')
• 'vuestro hermano' ('your brother', talking to a group of people), 'vuestros hermanos' ('your brothers')
• 'su hermano' ('your brother', using the polite register when speaking to either a group or individual), 'sus hermanos' (your brothers)

You might be familiar with the phrase 'mi casa es su casa' (literally, 'my house is your house', which can be better translated as 'make yourself at home'). We can see that the possessive here is 'su', as the host is addressing the guest in the polite register (though when I say this to a Spaniard I still replace 'su' with 'tu' if I know them even only vaguely well).

One final thing, in Spanish every noun has a 'gender', either masculine or feminine. This is can seem arbitrary to native speakers of English but you can easily find out the gender of a noun by looking it up in a dictionary. For the 'vosotros' form you need to agree the possessive with the gender of the object, as well as the number ('tu', 'tus', 'su' and 'sus' stay the same for both genders), by using an 'o' at the end for a masculine noun and an 'a' for a feminine one, so:

vuestro hermano, vuestros hermanos, vuestra hermana (your sister, speaking to a group of people), vuestras hermanas (your sisters).

This may all sound complicated, but once you know the 2 rules I stated at the very start of this answer you have the correct word for 'your' to go with any noun. There are practically no irregularities, with this, compared to French, for which you have to learn quite a number of exceptions for the possessives. Here are examples for each:

• your cat ('gato', a masculine noun in the singular): tu gato, vuestro gato, su gato
• your apple ('manzana', a feminine noun in the singular): tu manzana, vuestra manzana, su manzana
• your jobs ('trabajos', a masculine noun in the plural): tus trabajos, vuestros trabajos, sus trabajos
• your houses ('casas', a feminine noun in the plural): tus casas, vuestras casas, sus casa

Hope this helps.

Tom Stubbs