The Differences Between Votre and Vos

DifferenceBetween · #1 05-09-2013

مقایسه تفاوت های The Differences Between Votre and Vos

“Votre” vs “Vos”

During English classes, do you remember how your teacher taught you the proper usage of possessive adjectives? Examples of possessive adjectives are: my, mine, your, yours, his, her, its, our, ours, their and theirs. Do these word samples ring a bell?

Possessive adjectives serve as the replacements for subject articles to indicate possession or to whom or to what a particular objects belongs. For example, instead of saying “Manero’s bag” all over again, you may rather state “His bag.” If you already know that the bag is owned by Manero, you may just use the possessive adjective, “his.” These possessive adjectives are very helpful because it can be used to avoid unnecessary repetition of the subject article’s proper name. If you keep on saying “Manero’s, Manero’s, Manero’s,” the person with whom you are speaking will probably get annoyed. Practically speaking, using possessive adjectives will also help you save your breath since they are only composed of one-syllable words compared to the many syllables when indicating the proper name of your subject article.

In French, they also have possessive adjectives with the same usage in English, but the possessive adjectives take different forms. When you study French, you will notice that there are more possessive adjectives in French than in English because of its many forms. These forms do not only consider the grammatical person, the number, and the gender, but they also consider the first letter of the thing possessed. Today’s article will focus on the usage of “votre” and “vos.” Have you ever heard of the terms? If not, read on to learn more about them.

The difference between “votre” and “vos” is that “votre” is the singular form of your while “vos” is the plural form. Here are some example sentences on the usage of “votre” and “vos”:

“Show me your passport, please.” “Montrez-moi votre passeport, s’il vous plaît.”
“Show me your passports, please.” “Montrez-moi vos passeports s’il vous plaît.”
“What is your name?” “Quel est votre nom?”
“What are your names?” “Quels sont vos noms?”
“Your grade is excellent.” “Votre note est excellente.”
“Your grades are excellent.” “Vos notes sont excellentes.”

Notice in the given examples that when you own something that is singular in form, “votre” is used. But when you own something that is plural in form, “vos” is used.

Also remember that “votre” and “vos” are the polite forms of your. They are generally used to point out the possessions of strangers, colleagues, and to those people whom you are not familiar with or without any personal relationship. As shown in example sentence number one, the conversation is probably between the airport’s security personnel and a passenger; the security personnel is obviously not familiar with every passenger he meets, so “votre,” the polite form, is used.

The usage of the possessive adjectives “votre” and “vos” are easy to learn if you understand that the thing being possessed is singular or plural. In the English language, it is easy to tell whether an object is singular or plural because the regular rule is to only to add an –s or –es to the words. Some take the irregular plural form. For example, the plural for “goose” is “geese.” If you are not familiar with the word, most often you will have a mistake on its subject/verb agreement.

Summary:

Possessive adjectives serve as the replacements for subject articles to indicate possession or to whom or to what a particular objects belongs.
“Votre” is a possessive adjective in singular form.
“Vos” is a possessive adjective in plural form.
Both “votre” and “vos” are polite forms of the word “your.”

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