Introduction to the possessive | The Apostrophe | Punctuation | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

hello grammarians hello Paige hi David
in the driver's seat so Paige today uh
it is my understanding that we are going
to talk about the possessive that's
right um what what even is the
possessive in English what does that
mean when when we say that like what
does it mean to possess something right
so that means to own something or to
have something okay so this relates to
the apostrophe and that we use the
apostrophe in many cases we use the
apostrophe s in many cases to show
possession right so if I were talking
about there are a couple of ways to show
that something belongs to someone or
something in English like I could say
the carrot that belonged to that rabbit
was delicious yeah but that's that's
pretty complicated and can make
sentences much longer than they need to
be so what's a simpler way of saying the
carrot that belonged to the rabbit was
delicious you can say something like the
rabbits carrot was delicious Oh
interesting so you're actually
containing there's like a lot of
information that's contained within the
the rabbits that that little thing
because you're expressing the
relationship between the rabbit and the
carrot just with that little apostrophe
yes that contains so much information in
it yeah that the whole idea of the
rabbit owning the carrot comes from that
apostrophe s that's super cool yeah it's
a pretty big deal so this doesn't just
apply to like common nouns like rabbits
this can also apply to proper nouns like
people or countries or businesses or
whatever totally or movies yeah anything
I think okay so okay so to pull a
completely random figure from American
history let's say Alexander Hamilton had
a surfboard okay so we could say using
the apostrophe s construction we could
refer to Alexander Hamilton's surfboard
right right the surfboard that belongs
to Alexander Hamilton all right so that
that seems pretty straightforward if we
want to show possession we just add an
apostrophe s is that true in all cases
though well okay not always okay so
there's a wrinkle of course there's
always a wrinkle introduced for us this
wrinkle page so
there's an exception to this rule of
using apostrophe s for possession when
you're using a pronoun right so rabbit
and Alexander Hamilton are both nouns
but there are pronouns like it or he or
she where you don't use an apostrophe to
show possessive so if I wanted to say
that surfboard is his there's no
apostrophe in there right right or we
could just as easily say his surfboard
and I think that's I mean that's the
same as saying that surfboard is
Alexander Hamilton's and you can see
that there's this real it makes sense to
want to put a possessive apostrophe s in
there right but that's not that's not
what you do this is this one kind of
obnoxious exception to the rule so for
possessive pronouns they don't they just
they never take apostrophes that's right
so okay so the possessive in English
usually formed with apostrophe s the
rabbits carrot was delicious Alexander
Hamilton's surfboard but when we're
talking about possessive pronouns like
his or hers or ours or theirs or my or
its no apostrophes are needed possessive
pronouns never take apostrophes you got
it sweet thanks Paige thank you
you can learn anything David out Paige
out