USING “СВОЙ” IN RUSSIAN 🇷🇺 #learnrussian #russiangrammar #easyrussian #russianlanguage

What is "svoy" in Russian? This word causes a lot of confusion among Russian students, so let's sort it out. So "svoy" literally means "one's own". And I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's the same across all personal pronouns in Russian. So my own is "svoy", your own is "svoy", his own is "svoy", and so on. But what causes the biggest confusion is when would you use "svoy" over the regular possessive pronouns? For example, when is my house "moy dom" and when is it "svoy dom"? Or when is his car "yvo" "mashina" versus "svoya" "mashina"? And as always, I have a super useful hack just for you. Remember, when you actually have the subject in the same sentence, you must use "svoy". For example, I love my house, would be "yalublu" "svoy dom", because in this sentence you literally have the subject "ya". And it's not a huge mistake to say "yalublu moy dom", even a native Russian speaker might say that. But the more proper way to say it is "yalublu svoy dom". Now, when you don't literally have the subject in the same sentence, you cannot use "svoy". So you must use the regular possessive pronoun. For example, this is my house "eta moy dom". So in this sentence we don't have the subject, which would be "ya". And that's why we cannot say "eta svoy dom", that sounds incorrect and makes no sense. Let's look at another example. Is this your dog "eta tlaja sabaka"? Again, in this sentence we don't have the subject, which would be "tri", so we use the regular possessive pronoun "tvaja". But do you love your dog? Would be "tri lubish svoyu sabaku". Because again, in this sentence we literally have the subject "tri", so we use "svoyu". But now, let me explain why we actually have "svoy" in Russian, and why sometimes it makes perfect sense to use it. So, in the earlier examples, you probably noticed it wasn't very useful. "yalublu moy dom", "yalublu svoy dom", they both mean "I love my house" and sound pretty correct. But let's look at the third person scenario. John and Michael, Druzea, John and Michael are friends. "Udjona jezgena" and "umikla jezgena". John has a wife and Michael has a wife. Now, imagine we want to say "John loves his wife". And of course, if we say that in English, that implies that John loves his own wife. But technically, it could sound a little ambiguous, because that could mean that he loves Michael's wife. Because Michael is also a "he". So, this is where "svoy" comes in in Russian. If we say "John loves his wife", that could only mean that he loves his own wife. But if we say "John loves his wife", which technically also means "John loves his wife", that sounds like he loves someone else's wife. Ooh, drama, drama. "Lubovny triugolnik"