"His shirt is open."
Translation:Hans skjorte er åben.
5 Comments
I had to look this up elsewhere, but maybe it was explained in Duolingo, so sorry if this is repeat info. And please correct my grammar if I'm going astray.
Choosing "hans" instead of "sin" bewildered me, since it's a distinction in English that only is made when emphasis is made. So apparently in Danish it has to do with whether or not the possessed object is reflexive. "Hans skjorte" means 'his shirt' and is accurate most of the time: e.g. "Det er hans skjorte." "Han har sin skjorte på" would roughly be 'he has his (own) shirt on.' You go with "sin" instead of "hans" because the owner of the shirt is also in the sentence, so "sin" shows that the ownership of the shirt is "reflected" elsewhere in the sentence. Okay. How'd I do?
Correct. For examle, if a girl ate her (own) ice cream, it would be: 'pigen spiser sin is'. But if it said 'pigen spiser hendes is', that would mean that the girl is eating the ice cream of some other girl.
I think the hin 'sin (if referring to a subject)' sounds confusing. It makes me understand that, if 'his shirt' is an object of the sentence, I should use 'hans'.
