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Swedish possessives | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk |  | |
| earthman Newbie Canada Joined 4391 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French | Message 1 of 5 16 April 2013 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
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Hi everyone...I joined this forum quite a while back, but I don't think I ever posted anything other than an introduction due to school getting pretty intense. I'm on a brief break between terms, and started learning Swedish with Rosetta Stone yesterday. I've been cruising through it, as I don't have much else to be doing...but I've recently hit a bit of a snag that I feel immersion isn't totally helping me wrap my brain around.
Can somebody explain to me how to differentiate between the reflexive possessive pronouns and other possessive pronouns? It makes perfect sense to me if you need to differentiate between two different people who are both present or something, but some of the Rosetta Stone examples seemed kinda weird to me (e.g., differentiating between "She is eating her (own) apple" and "she is eating her (another person's) apple"). Is there an easier way to explain when to use each of these? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4303 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 2 of 5 16 April 2013 at 5:47pm | IP Logged |
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It's actually pretty simple.
The reflexive possessive pronoun always refers to the subject of the sentence (subject=possessor) while the normal possessive pronouns (for 3rd person singular and plural) refer to objects/persons who are not the subject of the sentence (possessor <> subject). But keep in mind that the subject of the sentence cannot be possessed by the subject of the sentence (it seems logical if you spell it out). This means you have no reflexive possessive pronoun in the translation of the sentence: "His (own) dog bit him", because the possessor is not the subject but the object in this sentence. Edited by daegga on 16 April 2013 at 5:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| earthman Newbie Canada Joined 4391 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French | Message 3 of 5 17 April 2013 at 3:10am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, that helps. I still feel like some of the Rosetta Stone examples were unclear, but I'm sure I'll get it eventually.
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| sehiralti Triglot Newbie Finland Joined 4539 days ago 15 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Turkish*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 4 of 5 22 April 2013 at 11:11pm | IP Logged |
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Although the explanation above is clear, I'll just add one more. If I remember correctly, the Rosetta Stone example
was "Han läser sin bok" vs. "Han läser hans bok". In this case, the first sentence means simply "He reads his book" (the same person), whereas the second means "He reads his (another persons) bok". It is actually more precise compared to English since you cannot form the second sentence with only a pronoun. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| earthman Newbie Canada Joined 4391 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French | Message 5 of 5 02 May 2013 at 7:47am | IP Logged |
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Thanks everyone! I definitely have it now. In retrospect, I don't even know what the confusion was...
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