Possessive pronoun
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A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner (also known as a possessive adjective). For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively. Like other pronouns, possessive pronouns can thus obviate the need to repeat nouns or noun phrases. (Sometimes the possessive determiners – my, your etc. – are themselves classified as possessive pronouns; see Possessive adjective: Nomenclature.)
There are eight possessive pronouns in modern English: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs, and whose, plus the antiquated possessive pronoun thine (see also English personal pronouns). The word "its" is, however, rarely used as such (almost always it functions as a possessive adjective).
Among these, "its" and "whose" are properly distinct from "it's" (a contraction of "it is" or "it has") and "who's" ("who is" or "who has"); however, these and other misspellings with apostrophes ("her's" to mean "hers", etc.) are common.
Some languages express possession by regular declension of the personal pronouns (the equivalents of I, you etc.) in the genitive case, or by using possessive suffixes. In Finnish, for example, minun (literally "I's"), means mine or my.[citation needed]
