mobilnya

Mobilnya is a possessive construction in Indonesian that combines the noun mobil (car) with the third-person possessive clitic -nya. The combination functions as a pronoun determiner meaning his car, her car, its car, or their car, depending on the discourse context. The form does not specify the owner; the owner is inferred from prior mentions or surrounding text.

In everyday Indonesian, -nya attaches directly to the possessed noun with no space, so mobilnya means “his/her/its car” in a casual, shorthand way. The phrase can replace longer forms such as mobil miliknya or miliknya mobil in informal speech, though the latter is uncommon. Its use is frequent in conversation, headlines, and informal writing.

Examples:

- Mobilnya baru. (His/her car is new.)

- Saya kehilangan mobilnya. (I lost his/her car.)

- Mobilnya di garasi. (His/her car is in the garage.)

The pronoun reference depends on context; without clear context, mobilnya can be ambiguous about who owns the car.

Notes:

- For greater explicitness or formality, speakers may use miliknya or milik orang tersebut, or specify the owner directly (e.g., mobil milik Budi).

- The -nya form is gender-neutral and does not indicate number beyond what the possessed noun conveys; it primarily signals possession rather than ownership details.

Understanding mobilnya involves recognizing how Indonesian uses clitic possessives to create compact, context-dependent references to possessions, a feature common across many Austronesian languages.