Я хочу послать письмо своему другу. in this sentence the

Я хочу послать письмо своему другу. in this sentence the word своему obviously means my or a friend. translations keep saying his friend. does this word have multiple meanings or anything else i shoud know?

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“свой” can replace all possessive pronouns.
Here it’s like ‘my’

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Hi ! =)) It’s a bit unusual for Germanic languages, in Russian you do not have to necessarily specify that he is YOUR friend, there is this generalizing word, literaly having a meaning of ‘self friend’ or, a more standard English ‘a friend of myself’ ! =)))

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To demonstrate this notion of generalization even further, ‘they send a letter to ‘self’ friends’, ‘we send a letter to ‘self’ friends’, in other words, one and the same word is used, you don’t need to necessarily specifiy that it’s YOUR friend, just ‘self’ friend is absolutely enough to definitely know you’re talking about your friend ! :wink:

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“Свой” always refers to the subject of the sentence–or clause. In this case the subject is я so свой means my. It is my understanding that свой is optional for first and second person pronouns but mandatory for third person pronouns.

Example по-англиский “He loves his wife.” Would be taken by the average English speaker as referring back to himself, which would mean he has a good marriage. But по-руский to convey this meaning one would have to use свой: “Он любит свою жену.” “Он любит его жену” would be interpreted as referring to another man’s wife-- scandal.

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It’s nearly correct, but only nearly! =))) This ‘self’ may even refer to an object, even a different one, or even from another section of the sentence! =))) The only way we absolutely reliably discern them is the case (genetive, dative, etc.) and the number (i.e. singular, plural) ! =))

The fact is, when we parse a sentence, say, that is being heard by us, we do not rely on the functions of the sentence members, as there is just no time and it’s not that easy to do the function analysys ‘on-the’fly’; what we really rely upon is, as I said, case and number! =))

It’s way much quicker and reliable! =)) Just an example, “Having come there, we saw them with their friends.” In English, everything is unambiguously clear, as the possesive ‘their’ clearly indicates whose friends were there! =))

In Russian, however, it would be “Приехав туда, мы увидели их со СВОИМИ друзьями.” First, as can be seen, this ‘self’ here has absolutely NO RELATION to the subject of the sentence, as the subject here is 'WE" ! =))) And it really hasn’t ! =))))

The only way you can immediately determine its reference when you just hear this sentence, is by the ending of the possesive ‘self’, i.e. (своИМ - which indicates instrumental case + И - which indicates the plural of THIS instrumental case, hence, it’s своИМИ) which is coordinated with the OBJECT the sentence, not the SUBJECT, i.e. “friends”, being also in instrumental plural (друЗЬЯ - indicates plural, and МИ - indicates instrumental of THIS plural, hence, друЗЬЯМИ).

And it’s only due to this coincidence of both, the case and the number, that we can immediately know, this ‘self’ here has nothing to do with ‘WE’, as their cases do not coincide! =)))

The hack is, it refers to the object of the sentence, not the subject, as the subject here is actually the actor of the sentence, i.e. ‘WE’ ! =)))

As for the second example, “He loves his wife,” normally, the context prompts the meaning, but sure enough, odds are very high you’ll be echoed by a specifying question, “His, you mean, ‘his own’, right?” :wink: However, if it goes like, “And his wife - well, he loves her!” - You do not even have to specify it’s his own wife, hence, no echo question follows as it’s not required! :wink: