their
det.belonging to or connected with a group of people, animals, or things that you have already mentioned. You use it to show that something is owned by them.
det.the possessive form of the third-person plural pronoun 'they', used to indicate ownership or association. It is also increasingly used as a gender-neutral singular possessive to refer to a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant.
“The children are playing with their new toys in the garden.”
“The neighbors asked if we could watch their dog while they are away on vacation next week.”
“While the committee members expressed diverse opinions during the debate, they eventually reached a consensus and submitted their final report to the board for review.”
A possessive determiner that must be followed by a noun or noun phrase.
their vs they're vs there — Their shows ownership, they're is the short form of 'they are', and there points to a place or introduces a fact.
From Old Norse þeirra. Replaced native Old English heora.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
For Mandarin speakers Mandarin lacks the voiced dental fricative /ð/, leading speakers to substitute the voiced alveolar plosive /d/, resulting in the pronunciation of 'their' as /deə/.
Mandarin uses the possessive particle 的 (de) for both singular and plural pronouns (他们的 tāmen de), which lacks the specific phonetic distinction found between 'his/her' and 'their'. Consequently, learners may generalize the singular possessive form to plural contexts when speaking rapidly.
For Japanese speakers Japanese lacks the dental fricative /ð/, so speakers substitute the voiced alveolar plosive /d/ or /z/. This results in /zeː/ or /deː/ instead of /ðɛər/.
Japanese possessives use the particle 'no' (の) which does not change based on number or person. Consequently, learners may over-rely on a single possessive form or omit 'their' when the plural antecedent is implied by context rather than explicitly marked.