"उससे अपना सेब लो और उसे उसका केला दो।"
Translation:Take your apple from her and give her her banana.
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Does anyone understand the grammatical difference between "usse" and "use"?
उससे seems to be pronounced उस्से, are both forms used, or is it just common pronunciation to drop the middle inherent vowel, but really it 'is there'?
It's because of Schwa deletion where the implicit vowel is sometimes deleted in Hindi.
This is the same reason अपना is pronounced 'apna' instead of 'apana' and उसका is pronounced 'uska' instead of 'usaka'.
But just because उससे is pronounced 'usse' does not make it उस्से. The pronunciation of उससे can be broken down as 'us-se' while उस्से would have been 'u-sse'
use usse liya hua kaila do= give her his banana( basically, the banana that you took from HIM.)
I have a brain-twisting question about this already brain-twisting sentence: do उससे, उसे and उसका refer to the same person or to two (or even three) different people?
Let's assume there may be 3 people A, B and C besides you and the person you're talking to. Can this sentence mean "take apple from A and give A their own (A's) banana"? Or "take apple from A and give A B's banana"? Or "take apple from A and give B A's banana"? Or "take apple from A and give B their own (B's) banana"? Or "take apple from A and give B C's banana"? Or any of those depending on context?
PS: Sorry for the headache :-p
It can mean any of those (if you are pointing at A, B and C while talking, for instance)
How do you know that the other person is her when there is no specified gender?
Weird. In the question type where you have to select the correct one from three options, for the same sentence the correct answer had no और in the middle of it even though it had an 'and' in English.
As I recall it uses not लो but another form I can't remember at the moment that embeds the 'and then' meaning.
I think it's called a conjunctive form.
Isnt the real meaning 'You take your apple and give her (or his) her (or his) banana'
'..give [to] her her [own] banana'
Modern English has very few case variations, so the two 'her's here have different grammar (as seen by the different words used for each in Hindi - उसे & उसका) but the word is nevertheless the same.
It may help to realise you could also translate it as 'give him his banana', 'give him her banana', or 'give her his banana'.
I've read through the discussion, and it's still totally unclear to me why अपना does not refer to the same subject both times in nearly identical phrases.
Also, it seems to contradict the example in the "tips and notes" that presented the dative case. The example given there was राज मुझे अपना केला देता है - Raj gives me his banana. If "मुझे अपना केला देता है" means "gives me his banana" (presumably because Raj is doing the giving), how could "उसे उसका केला दो" mean "give her her banana" when you are doing the giving?
Both the example in the tips and notes and the first half of this sentence suggest to me that the second half should mean "give her your banana". What am I missing?
Oops. I was tired and had a bit of a fever. I was staring at this for hours trying to figure it out. :D
Thanks for pointing out my mistake!