"Peter eats his apple."
Translation:पीटर अपना सेब खाता है ।
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Would "पीटर उसका सेब खाता है" be a strange or incorrect way to phrase this?
I have the same doubt. Shouldn't अपना be the only acceptable answer, as Peter is eating his own apple..? I actually typed in उसका mindlessly and I was surprised to find that the answer is accepted.
The English sentence doesn't make it clear that Peter is eating his own apple. The context could be something like 'Paul brings an apple to school. Peter eats his apple'. In this case, उसका सेब is appropriate.
Uska would be his [someone's], apna means his [own]. It resolves an ambiguity that we can in English only with more words; instead we usually rely on context and sanity.
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I'm a beginner in Hindi (and not so good in English), but I felt it's very similar to Japanese "jibun".
If it's the case, the add of "own" to "my", "your" or "his/her/its" (and plurals) is only a didatic way to express it in English for lack of words. In a real world translation, it's not needed, in my opinion.
If we can call "I", "you", "he/she/it" as "absolute" 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, then "apna" would be a "relative 1st person (my)", relative to the context of "apna" is referring to. In this sense, I think "own" transforms for example, "absolute his" to "his own", a "relative my" of 3rd person.
For example, 1) Peter apna seb khata he -> I'm talking about Peter, the context is Peter, so, "apna" is "my" for Peter. Since there's no "relative 'my'" in one word in English, we could just translate as "Peter eats his apple", as suggested by Duolingo.
2) Tumhara apna seb khata he -> I'm talking about you, so, "apna" is "my" for you. Since there's no "relative 'my'" in one word in English, we could just translate as "You eat your apple".
Besides, I don't know yet if Hindi has a "relative you". In Japanese, it's "aite".
Yeah thanks all for the comments it helped me a lot ttthhhhaaannnkkk yyyyyoooooouuuuu......
