Ihr

Ihr is a German word with several related but distinct uses, depending on capitalization and grammatical function. It commonly functions as a possessive determiner meaning “your” in the formal address. When speaking to someone with the polite Sie form, you would typically say, for example, Ist das Ihr Auto? Here the word indicates possession by the person being addressed, and Sie is used as the formal pronoun for “you.”

In other contexts, i h r (lowercase) is a possessive determiner or pronoun meaning “her” or “their.” For example, ihr Hund means “her dog,” and ihr Haus means “their house.” The lowercase form can also appear as the feminine or plural possessive for third-person subjects, depending on sentence structure. The capitalization of ihr shifts in written German: the formal possessive often appears with a capital I in contexts that emphasize the polite form, while the lowercase i h r is used for the third-person possessives in ordinary text.

As a personal pronoun, the form occurs in compounds and with pronoun references, but the standard second-person formal pronoun is Sie; miens of address remain separate from the possessive determiner. In everyday usage, context usually makes clear whether ihr means “your” in the formal sense or one of the third-person possessives.

Examples:

- Ist das Ihr Auto? (Is that your car? formal)

- Das ist ihr Hund. (That is her dog.)

- Ihr Haus ist groß. (Their house.)

- Sie hat ihr Buch gefunden. (She found her book.)