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- Topic: Norwegian (Bokmål) >
- "Han elsker kona si."
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I'm trying to nail down this rule... but struggling. So could you say either "kona si" or "hans kona"? Would both be accurate, but the former just emphasizes a bit more precisely whose wife it is that he's loving?
"Si/sin/sitt" points back to the subject of the sentence, in this case making it clear that the subject ("han") loves his own wife. Using "hans" would imply that he loves somebody else's wife.
The English "his" is ambiguous, so when translating from English to Norwegian we often have to allow for both options.
Si/sitt/sin is when the thing owned is owned by tge subject of the sentence. 'Han elsker kvinnen sin' = he loves his (own) woman, whereas 'Han elsker kvinnen hans' could = he (justin) loves his (brad's) woman, where both 'he's in the sentence are not referring to the same person.
I thought si is feminine, if she is "his wife" it supposed to be "kona sin" am I wrong?
The possessive agrees with the possessed (kona), not the possessor (han).
Couldn't it be sin anyway since you can use masculine? sin is (m/f)? Am I wrong?
If you opt to use the masculine declination "konen", you can use sin, but when the feminine form "kona" is used, you have to follow suit.
This is a way of explaining it, but I am not quite sure whether the use of the masculine declination changes the gender of "kone" so that you can use "sin".
Hi all! didn´t get this, the tips mention sin si sitt sine as used with objects only and not somebody but is used for wife and husband?
It is the grammatical object, not object as in "a thing". In this sentence "Han" is the subject, "elsker" is the verm and "kona si" is the (direct) object.
It's not uncommon for a word to have several meanings, neither in English nor Norwegian.
"Si" as an imperative verb means "say". You can read up on "si" as a possessive in the posts above.
You could but that would denote someone else's wife, not his own. You use 'si' when referring back to the grammatical subject of the sentence, a distinction we don't have in English grammar.
According to what we learned, it is logical to say "Han elsker kona si", because "kona" is feminine (and has the definite form). Some sentences ago, however, I think I read "Han elsker kona sin" which - should it be correct - I do not understand. Should it be "konen sin"?? Or is "sin" simply wrong as it is the masculine form? I should appreciate a useful hint or explanation.
You might know already by now, but "konen sin" would indeed be the correct form if going with "konen".
