The Russian language is rich, expressive and universal. At the same time, it is a very complex language. What are some declensions or conjugations worth! And the variety of syntactic structure? What about, for example, an Englishman who is used to the fact that sentences in his native language have a clear structure? Consider the English phrase "We go to our Museum today". This sentence can be translated into Russian in different ways:
- "We will go to our museum today".
- "Let's go to our museum today".
- "Let's go to our museum today".
- "Today we will go to our museum".
Depending on the word order, the meaning of the sentence also changes. In the first case, information about the intention to go to the museum is provided (this is the most neutral option). In the second case, attention is focused on exactly how people will get to the museum (on foot, not by transport). In the third, it is specified that the event will happen today. And in the fourth sentence, people say that they will go to a specific museum, "ours", and not any other. And right hereIt is appropriate to talk about such a part of speech as a pronoun. Let us find out further why we need possessive pronouns in Russian.
Pronoun
So what is a pronoun? This is an independent part of speech that can replace any other - a noun, an adjective, an adverb, and even a numeral. Pronouns include words that do not specifically name objects, quantities, signs, but only indicate them. There are the following categories of pronouns:
- Personal: me, you, you, we. These parts of speech indicate the person in question.
- Indicative: that, that, that, that, this.
- Definitive: all, each, other.
- Negative: nobody, nothing.
- Indefinite: a few, some, some.
- Possessive: mine, ours, yours, yours.
- Returnable: yourself.
- Interrogative: who? what? which? whose?
- Relative. Coincide with interrogatives, but are used as allied words in subordinate clauses.
As you can see, the pronoun present in the above translation of the English phrase refers to possessive pronouns. Let's talk about them.
What are the possessive pronouns?
Possessive pronouns in Russian play an important role. Possessive pronouns are those pronouns that denote the belonging of an object to someone or something. They areanswer the questions: "Whose?", "Whose?", "Whose?", "Whose?".
We present you a list of possessive pronouns present in Russian:
- mine, mine, mine; ours, ours, ours; mine, ours;
- your, yours, yours; yours, yours, yours; yours, yours;
- his, her; them.
Sometimes the pronoun "one's" is conditionally included here as a reflexive possessive.
Changing Possessive Pronouns
The above list is not accidentally divided into three lines. So you can quickly find out how possessive pronouns change in Russian. First, they are transformed by persons: the first line contains the pronouns of the first person, the second - the second person, and the third line - the third. In the table below, you can see that possessive pronouns change by gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular and plural).
How do possessive pronouns change in cases (or decline) in Russian? The examples below will clarify this issue in as much detail as possible:
- Im. p. (who?): My mom and I went to the zoo today.
- Rod. p. (whom?): My mother was not at home today.
- Dat. p. (to whom?): My mother liked walking around the zoo.
- Vin. p. (whom?): Even a lion did not scare my mother at the zoo.
- Tv. p. (by whom?): I'm proud of my mom.
- Suggestion p. (about whom?): I will tell everyone in the class about mymom.
There are also such modifications:
- Im. p. (what?): I went to school and now I have my own textbooks.
- Rod. p. (what?): While I was in kindergarten, I didn't have my textbooks.
- Dat. p. (what?): Now I am a schoolgirl and I am very happy with my textbooks.
- Vin. p. (what?): I often look at my textbooks, even if I can not read everything.
- Tv. p. (what?): I am proud of my textbooks: they are neatly wrapped.
- Suggestion p. (about what?): I've already been buzzing my mom and dad's ears about my textbooks.
Ways to differentiate
As mentioned above, possessive pronouns in Russian answer such questions: "Whose?", "Whose?", "Whose?". Thanks to such questions, one can easily distinguish between personal pronouns and personal pronouns in the meaning of possessives in Russian. This nuance can be remembered by studying such examples:
- I invited her over. Called who? - her. Personal pronoun.
- I accidentally noticed her mother on the street. Whose mom? - her. In this case, there is a clear indication of ownership. That is, we see a possessive pronoun.
There are features in personal pronouns and in the meaning of possessives in declension. This moment is represented in the following examples:
- Nominative (who?): My friend, her sister and their parents got caught in the rain today.
- Genitive (of whom?): My friend, her sister and their parents are not at home today.
- Dative (to whom?): To my friend and her sistertoday will fly in from parents because they left far without warning.
- Accusative (of whom?): My friend and her sister were met by their parents and taken home.
- Creative (by whom?): I admire my friend and her parents because they love to have fun together.
- Prepositional (about whom?): Sometimes I tell my grandmother about my friend and her parents.
In the table below, you can see that personal pronouns in the meaning of possessives remain unchanged, while proper possessives are inflected. So, you already know what possessive pronouns are. In Russian, this is an indispensable part of speech.
Proverbs and sayings
The people came up with many sayings and proverbs that contain possessive pronouns. The most popular of them are such sayings:
- It was yours, now it's ours.
- My word is like granite.
- Own shirt closer to the body.
- You see a straw in someone else's eye, but you don't notice a log in your own.
- Tell me who your friend is and I'll tell you who you are.
