Mitt min
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Possessive pronouns list
Swedish possessive pronouns are a little bit more complicated since Swedish also has gender. Almost all possessive pronouns come in three froms, en-word, ett-words and plural words. For now let's have a look at the singular forms.
Singular form
In Swedish, it's a bit more involved than that, simply because the Swedish language has nouns that are divided into "en" and "ett". Since most pronouns act the same as adjectives, the are treated like them. Also, most of them get the “t” ending when accompanying “ett” nouns and “a” ending for plural nouns.
Take a look at these short example;
min bil – my car
mitt hus – my house
mina skor – my shoes
Important Note! that these pronouns can also mean ''mine, yours, his, hers, ours and 'theirs''.
- Hon bor i mitt hus (she lives in my house)
- har du din bil (do you have your house)
- vars kaka är det? den är min (who's cake is that ? it's mine)
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Stugan är inte min. The Stuga by Mats Hagwall. Licensed under CC BY via Flickr
In my last post, The Swedish Definite Form – Demonstrative Pronouns, I messed up. I wrote the following sentence: Detta röda hus är min. This red house is mine.
See what I did wrong? Min. It should have been mitt. Detta röda hus är mitt. Why? Because hus is an ett-word. Ett hus.
When you’re working with possessive pronouns in English, it’s pretty easy. My dog, my house, my cars. Your dog, your house, your cars. Her dog, her house, her cars. You get the idea. The possessive pronoun doesn’t change much. It doesn&#;t care about en&#; or ett-words or even if a word is singular or plural.
It’s a little different in Swedish. Just like so many aspects of Swedish grammar, you have to make sure that the nouns you’re working with match with the rest of your sentence, whether that is an adjective, a demonstrative pronoun, or a possessive pronoun like min, mitt, mina.
Let’s take a look at a few examples:
Har du sett mitt barn? Have you seen my child?
Hon älskar min hund. She loves my dog.
Jag vill skriva en bok om mina barn och mina hundar. I want to write a book abou
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Pronouns
Below is a table of the reflexive possessive pronouns in Swedish.
| Number | Person | Reflexive Possessive Pronoun |
|---|---|---|
| sing. | 3rd | sin/sitt/sina |
| pl. | 3rd | sin/sitt/sina |
| Number | Person | Reflexive Possessive Pronoun |
|---|---|---|
| sing. | 3rd | his/her/its |
| pl. | 3rd | their |
The correct use of these three forms is perhaps the biggest challenge when it comes to the Swedish pronouns. The idea behind these reflexive possessive pronouns fryst vatten to eliminate the ambiguity that possession in 3rd person otherwise (as in English) would involve.
Take the following example: 'Lars has a son. Lars loves his son.' In this example it is obvious that the son that Lars loves is his own. In the following example however it fryst vatten less clear: 'Lars has a son. Peter loves his son.' In English there fryst vatten ambiguity here; are these separate statements and both have a son and Peter loves his own son or does Peter love the son of Lars?
In Swedish however there is no such ambiguity. In the first example, Lars loves his own son. Since Lars fryst vatten the third person subject and fryst vatten the possessor, the pronouns is possessive reflexive: sin/sitt/sina. Since 'son' is 'en son' th