"Девушка думала о её матери."
Translation:The young woman was thinking about her mother.
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Doesn't that sentence imply that she was thinking about someone else's mother? As opposed to «Девушка думала о своей матери»?
2449
It depends on the context. Yes in some cases this sentence may mean that she was thinking about someone else's mother.
On what context? I would think that this always means that she is thinking about someone else's mother.
Both are possible. If it is her own mother then "своей" is preferable but "её" is correct too. It just makes the sentence a bit ambiguous.
In Russia woman can be young or old, doesn't matter. Without young is correct too
- 1011
I think девушка means a teenage girl / young woman, older than девочка but younger than женщина.
Why does this not accept girl as an answer? Young woman isn't what i think if when i think of девушка
Why devushka HAS to be a girl/young woman? I know it differs from zhenshina, but is it so distinctly different that it's marked as a mistake?
Historically девушка was a girl from her puberty until her marriage (which usually happened in her teens/early twenties). Kind of like "a maiden". These days the definition is stretched so at ~30-35 a woman can still be called девушка. Nevertheless, it's a "young woman", not just a "woman".
Some Russian vowels have a bit of a y sound at the beginning, depending where they appear -- е "yay", я "yah" and ё "yo". Those are "consonant-like" enough to not need the б on об.
- 2449
No, it's correct here. But if she was thinking about her own mother I would say "о своей матери"
Whose girlfriend? Without specifying whose girlfriend it can be (like, его девушка) it can be only "young woman" or "girl".
