los zapatos de ella her shoes
la casa de ellos their house
This formula can be adopted also to stress different possessors:la bufanda de usted no la de él your scarf not his
In Latin America su/susand suyo/a/os/asare often assumed to refer to
ustedor ustedesand so are typically replaced by de él, de ellaetc. when
they mean ‘his’, ‘her(s)’ or ‘their(s)’.Parts of the body and personal effects
In contrast to English usage, it is usual in Spanish to use the definite article
rather than a possessive adjective for parts of the body, clothing and
personal possessions:
Ponte los zapatos. Put your shoes on.Enséñame las manos. Show me your hands.
Tengo que depilarme las piernas. I have to shave my legs.
See also 14.2(b).However, a possessive adjective is required where its omission could lead
to ambiguity:
¿Donde están mis zapatos? Where are my shoes?Possessive adjectives with adverbs and prepositions
Occasionally after an adverb or after a compound preposition, the sequence
de+ prepositional object pronoun (mí, ti, életc.) is reduced to mío, mía,
tuyo, tuyaetc.
The possessive adjective usually takes the masculine singular form unless
the adverb or preposition ends in an -a, in which case it takes the feminine
singular form:encima tuya = encima de ti on top of you
alrededor nuestro = alrededor all around us
de nosotros5.6
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Possessive
adjectives