In short

Greek has no everyday adjective like “my”, “your”, “her”. It uses a tiny unstressed pronoun that comes after the noun and leans on it: το σπίτι μου “my house”, literally “the house of-me”. Three things follow from that:

• The article stays. It is “the house of-me”, never “house of-me”.
• The little word is an enclitic - it has no accent of its own, so if the noun before it is stressed on the third-from-last syllable, the noun grows a second accent: το όνομα -> το όνομά μου.
• For emphasis or contrast (“my car, not yours”) Greek switches to δικός μου, an adjective that agrees with the thing owned and can stand between the article and the noun, or on its own after είμαι.

The rule

1. The forms. The possessives are simply the weak (unstressed) genitive forms of the personal pronoun you met in lesson 10: μου, σου, του / της / του, μας, σας, τους. They never change for the noun they belong to - only for the owner. το βιβλίο μου, τα βιβλία μου, της αδελφής μου: μου is μου throughout.

2. Position: after the noun, article kept. The neutral possessive phrase is article + noun + clitic:

• ο φίλος μου, η δουλειά σου, το τηλέφωνό της, οι γονείς μας, τα παιδιά τους.

The clitic cannot open the phrase (never μου το σπίτι) and the article cannot be dropped (never σπίτι μου in ordinary statements). An indefinite article works the same way and gives English “of mine”: ένας φίλος μου “a friend of mine”.

3. Third person agrees with the owner, not the thing owned. του = a male (or neuter) owner, της = a female owner, τους = several owners of any gender. η μητέρα του is “his mother”; η μητέρα της is “her mother”. The noun μητέρα is feminine either way - it plays no part in the choice.

4. The second accent (δεύτερος τόνος). A Greek word may not be stressed further back than the third-from-last syllable. Since the enclitic has no stress, the group noun + clitic is pronounced as one word, and a noun already stressed on its third-from-last syllable would end up stressed too far back. Greek repairs this by writing an extra accent on the last syllable of the noun:

• το όνομα -> το όνομά μου, ο δάσκαλος -> ο δάσκαλός μας, τα μαθήματα -> τα μαθήματά τους, το αυτοκίνητο -> το αυτοκίνητό της.

Nouns stressed on the last or second-to-last syllable need no repair: το σπίτι μου, η γιαγιά μου, ο αδελφός σου. This is obligatory spelling, not decoration.

5. With an adjective. When an adjective precedes the noun, the clitic may lean on the adjective or sit at the end of the phrase. Both are correct and both are common; the second accent rule applies to whichever word the clitic follows.

• η νέα μου φίλη = η νέα φίλη μου “my new friend”
• ο καλύτερός μου φίλος = ο καλύτερος φίλος μου “my best friend” (καλύτερος is proparoxytone, so it takes the second accent when the clitic follows it)

6. Emphatic δικός μου. To contrast owners, or to say “mine” with no noun at all, use δικός, δική, δικό + the same clitic. δικός is a normal adjective in -ός, -ή, -ό: it agrees in gender, number and case with the thing possessed, while the clitic still marks the owner.

• Predicative: Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι δικό μου. “This book is mine.”
• Attributive, inside the article: το δικό μου αυτοκίνητο “my car (as opposed to another)”.

Unemphatic sentences do not use δικός: “my car is red” is simply το αυτοκίνητό μου είναι κόκκινο.

7. Not covered here. The same little words μου, σου, της also serve as indirect objects (“he told me”). That is a different job and waits for lesson 34.

Forms & patterns

The weak possessives

The article stays, whatever the noun

Where the second accent appears

δικός μου - the full declension (the clitic can be any of μου, σου, του, της, μας, σας, τους)

The vocative cells are listed for completeness; in practice you meet them only in warm address such as δικέ μου φίλε. δικός is stressed on its last syllable, so it never needs a second accent.

The possessive patterns

Examples

Common mistakes

• μου το σπίτι -> το σπίτι μου - the possessive is an enclitic: it leans backwards on the noun and can never open the phrase.
• Σπίτι μου είναι μικρό. -> Το σπίτι μου είναι μικρό. - the definite article never disappears; Greek says “the house of-me”.
• το όνομα μου -> το όνομά μου - a host stressed on its third-from-last syllable must take the second accent before a clitic.
• ο δάσκαλος μας -> ο δάσκαλός μας - same rule; the missing accent is a spelling error, exactly like a missing accent anywhere else.
• το σπίτί μου -> το σπίτι μου - do not add a second accent to a noun that is not stressed three syllables back.
• Η μητέρα του δουλεύει (meaning “her mother”) -> Η μητέρα της δουλεύει - the third-person clitic agrees with the owner, not with the feminine noun μητέρα.
• το μου αυτοκίνητο -> το αυτοκίνητό μου / το δικό μου αυτοκίνητο - the clitic is an enclitic and must lean back on a stressed word - the noun, or an adjective before it (η νέα μου φίλη) - so it can never follow the article directly.
• Αυτό είναι δικός μου. -> Αυτό είναι δικό μου. - δικός agrees with the thing possessed (αυτό is neuter), never with the owner.
• Δικό μου δωμάτιο έχει μπαλκόνι. -> Το δικό μου δωμάτιο έχει μπαλκόνι. - the attributive δικός μου sits inside the article, it does not replace it.
• Το αυτοκίνητό μου είναι δικό μου κόκκινο. -> Το αυτοκίνητό μου είναι κόκκινο. - use δικός only where you really contrast owners.

Tips

• Pronounce the group as a single word - [τοσπίτιμου], [τοόνομάμου]. Hearing it that way makes both the fixed word order and the second accent feel inevitable.
• Quick test for the second accent: count three syllables back from the end of the noun. If the accent is sitting there, write one more on the final syllable. Otherwise change nothing.
• Learn the third person as a pair: του = his, της = her. English speakers reach for the noun’s gender; Greek asks only who the owner is.
• Direct address drops the article, because a vocative has none: Αγάπη μου, παιδί μου, Θεέ μου. That is not an exception to memorise separately.
• In a δικός μου phrase two agreements run at once: δικός matches the possessed noun, the clitic matches the owner - η δική τους κόρη “their daughter”.
• Answer “whose?” with δικός alone, in the right gender: Δικό μου, Δική μου, Δικά μας.
• A clitic that looks possessive but carries its own accent is doing another job: «Ο πατέρας μού είπε…» means “the father told me”, not “my father said…”. You meet that use in lesson 34.