Dutch possessive pronouns agree with the possessor, not the possessed noun — unlike adjectives, they do not change for the gender of the noun they modify. The forms: mijn (my), jouw / je (your — informal), uw (your — formal), zijn (his), haar (her), ons / onze (our), jullie (your — plural), hun / hun (their). Jouw is the stressed form; je is the unstressed, more common spoken form: “Dat is jouw boek” vs. “Is dit je boek?”
The ons / onze distinction is a common source of errors. Ons is used before het-nouns in the singular: “ons huis” (our house). Onze is used before de-nouns and all plurals: “onze auto, onze kinderen.” This mirrors the adjective inflection rule — the same pattern applies. Think of ons/onze as following the same logic as een groot / een grote: the het-noun takes the uninflected form.
Possessive pronouns are also expressed using van + pronoun in a more formal or emphatic way: “Dat is een boek van haar” (That is a book of hers). For reflexive possession — referring back to the subject — Dutch uses zijn/haar ambiguously (can refer to third person or reflexively). In ambiguous contexts, the possessive adjective is clear from context. Learners should note that Dutch does not have a separate reflexive possessive form equivalent to English “his own” — instead zijn eigen makes ownership explicit: “zijn eigen huis.”