Kazakh Possessive

Kazakh grammar for beginners · The ending goes on the thing owned

A possessive in Kazakh is built from two parts: a pronoun naming the owner, and a suffix on the word being owned. menıñ ağam (менің ағам) "my elder brother" has both — menıñ (менің) "my", and -m (-м) on the end of ağa (аға).

Most of the time the pronoun is left out, because the suffix has already said who the owner is: ağam (ағам) on its own still means "my elder brother".

The possessive pronouns

The endings

Owner	Pronoun	After a vowel	After a consonant
my	menıñ (менің)	-m (-м)	-ym (-ым) / -ım (-ім)
your — one person	senıñ (сенің)	-ñ (-ң)	-yñ (-ың) / -ıñ (-ің)
your — one person, polite	sızdıñ (сіздің)	-ñyz (-ңыз) / -ñız (-ңіз)	-yñyz (-ыңыз) / -ıñız (-іңіз)
his, her, its	onyñ (оның)	-sy (-сы) / -sı (-сі)	-y (-ы) / -ı (-і)
our	bızdıñ (біздің)	-myz (-мыз) / -mız (-міз)	-ymyz (-ымыз) / -ımız (-іміз)
your — several people	senderdıñ (сендердің)	-laryñ (-ларың) / -lerıñ (-лерің)	the plural, then -yñ (-ың) / -ıñ (-ің)
your — several people, polite	sızderdıñ (сіздердің)	-laryñyz (-ларыңыз) / -lerıñız (-леріңіз)	the plural, then -yñyz (-ыңыз) / -ıñız (-іңіз)
their	olardyñ (олардың)	-sy (-сы) / -sı (-сі)	-y (-ы) / -ı (-і)

A stem ending in a vowel: äke (әке) "father"

A stem ending in a consonant: qalam (қалам) "pen"

Speaking to more than one person changes the noun

Address more than one person and the noun takes a plural, whether or not there is more than one thing. That plural is counting the listeners, not the things owned.

Turkish never does this. It marks the listeners in -iniz alone and leaves the noun untouched, moving only once the things themselves go plural — which is the one place Kazakh has to stack a second plural on top.

Two shapes where Turkish writes four

Turkish spells rounding harmony and Kazakh does not, so this runs through the whole paradigm: four written shapes in Turkish against two in Kazakh, ending after ending.

"My" is -ım, -im, -um, -üm where Kazakh writes -ym (-ым) and -ım (-ім). "Your" is -ın, -in, -un, -ün against -yñ (-ың) and -ıñ (-ің). The polite "your" is -ınız, -iniz, -unuz, -ünüz against -yñyz (-ыңыз) and -ıñız (-іңіз), and "our" behaves the same way again.

Keep going

← Personal Pronouns · Family and Kinship →

All Kazakh lessons

• The Alphabet — Read Kazakh without learning Cyrillic
• How the Letters Behave — The things spelling does not tell you
• Turkish ↔ Kazakh Sound Laws — Six rules that unlock hundreds of words for free
• Vowel Harmony — The same system as Turkish — with one simplification
• Numbers — One to a thousand, and what a number does to the word after it
• Days of the Week — Saturday, and the days counted off it
• Months — Twelve names to learn outright
• Seasons — The four, and the weather that comes with them
• The Plural — One suffix, six written shapes
• Body Parts — From the top of the head to the sole of the foot, and the organs in between
• Personal Pronouns — Four ways to say "you", one word for "he" and "she"
• Family and Kinship — Lineages, generational ties, and reciprocal kinship
• The Copula — Saying "I am a teacher" with no verb at all
• Saying What Something Is Not — One extra word, and the personal ending moves onto it
• Asking a Question — One small word at the end, and nothing else moves
• Having and Not Having — No verb "to have" — only "there is" and "there is not"
• Where: the Locative — Location and time: one ending
• Where to: the Dative — Direction, destination, recipient, and purpose
• Where from: the Ablative — Starting points, origins, and standards of comparison
• Whose: the Genitive — Possession, definite noun phrases, and relationships
• What: the Accusative — The thing an action is done to — marked only when it is a particular one
• With: the Instrumental — Who you did it with, and what you did it with
• All Seven Together — What each ending marks, and every shape it takes
• Spatial Postpositions and Relational Nouns — Expressing position, direction and time with postpositions and relational nouns
• Verbs, Infinitives and Commands — From dictionary forms in {{-у}} to bare stems, commands and polite requests
• Simple Present Tense — Habitual actions, general facts and future intentions in {{-а / -е / -й}}
• Simple Past Tense — Witnessed and completed past actions in {{-ды / -ді / -ты / -ті}}
• Distant Past and Past Participle — Experienced past actions in {{-ған / -ген}} and conversational negation with {{жоқ}}
• Habitual Past and the "Used-To" Aspect — Expressing past routines in {{-атын / -етін / -йтын / -йтін}} and habitual participles
• Reported and Narrative Past — Hearsay, indirect evidence and surprise discoveries in {{-ыпты / -іпті / -пты / -пті}}
• The Present Continuous Tense — Ongoing actions and the four auxiliary verbs of physical stance
• Future Tenses — Definite intentions in {{-мақ / -мек}} and probable futures in {{-ар / -ер / -р}}
• Desires, Intentions and Optatives — Expressing wishes in {{-ғым келеді}} and making proposals in {{-айын / -айық}}
• Ability and Inability — Expressing "can" and "cannot" using converbs in {{-а / -е / -й}} and {{алу}}
• Conditionals and "If" Clauses — Real and hypothetical conditions in {{-са / -се}} and counterfactuals with {{еді}}
• Sequential Converbs and Action Chains — Linking consecutive actions in {{-ып / -іп / -п}} without repeating conjunctions
• Causative, Passive and Reflexive Verb Voices — Grammatical voice derivations in {{-дыр / -қыз / -т}}, {{-ыл / -іл}} and {{-ыс / -іс}}
• Necessity, Obligation and Possibility — Expressing "must", "need to" and "might" with {{керек}}, {{қажет}} and {{мүмкін}}
• Verb Differences & False Friends — How common Kazakh and Turkish verbs parted ways over time

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