The most common way of expressing possession in both English and French is to use possessive adjectives (mine, yours, his, etc.). In French, there are two other ways of expressing possession/ownership:

• Using the verb ‘appartenir’ (the syntax is ‘appartenir à qn’ – to belong to someone)

Exemple 1: Le livre appartient à Mark – The book belongs to Marc (The book is Marc’s)

Exemple 2: À qui appartient ce portable? – Who does this phone belong to? (Whose phone is this?)

Because of the syntax ‘appartenir à qn’, the ‘à qn‘ part can be replaced with an indirect object pronoun. If we apply an IOP to the first example, we get ‘Le livre lui appartient’ (The book belongs to him).

• Using the verb ‘être’ + à

Exemple 1: Le livre est à Mark – The book belongs to Marc (The book is Marc’s)

Exemple 2: À qui appartient ce portable? | C’est à moi – Whose phone is this? | It’s mine

‘Appartenir’ is used more in formal contexts, while ‘être’ is used in more everyday contexts. However, the two expressions are more or less the same and can be used interchangeably.

Where in English possession is expressed using an apostrophe followed by the letter ‘s’, the French use the preposition ‘de’. Let’s look at some examples:

Exemple 1: My mother’s friends always drink when they come over – Les amis de ma mère boivent toujours quand elles la rendent visite (literally “the friends of my mother”)

Rather than use the -‘s form of a noun (this is called a clitic), the French use ‘de’ (of), as in ‘the friends of my mother’. The clitic does not exist in French; there is no such thing as “ma mère’s amis”.

Exemple 2: She likes to make snacks for her neighbours’ kids – Elle aime faire des collations* pour les enfants de ses voisins. (literally “the kids of her neighbours“)

*”collation“, a feminine noun, is the French equivalent of afternoon tea