In English, when talking about possessions in the third person, we use “his”, “her” and “their” as the adjective (“his apple, her car, their shoes”) and “his” and “hers” as the possessive pronouns (“the apple is his, the car is hers, the shoes are theirs”).
Things work a little differently in Danish.
That, that and sine
Some parts of the Danish language are more important than others to master. For example even though it is good to know which words are in (a car = “a car”) and which are et (a house = “a house”), it is not a disaster if you happen to say “a car” or “a house”.
Using the wrong pronoun (such as hans or hers) could cause more confusion, however. Take a look at this classic example:
- Christian kisses his girlfriend.
- Christian kisses his girlfriend.
In English, both sentences translate to “Christian is kissing his partner”. In Danish however, you make a distinction between “his own wife” = sinand his as in someone else’s wife, hans in the second sentence.
If we swap sin and hans for names, this may become clearer:
- Christian kisses Christian’s (his) girlfriend.
- Christian kisses Henrik’s (his) girlfriend.
In other words, if Christian is the subject of the sentence and also has an “owner” (please forgive the expression) relationship to the object of the sentence, then we express that ownership by using sin and not hans.
It is not only hans that sometimes should be replaced with sin. It is also the case for hers (“her”) and their (“their”). It is also worth bearing in mind that sin changes to sit if the object is an et-word, and to sine if the object is plural. See the examples below:
Christian has painted his house this summer
Christian painted his own house last summer
Christian has painted his/her/their house this summer.
Christian painted his (Henrik’s)/her/their house last summer.
In the second sentence here, Christian has painted someone else’s house – maybe he’s a painter-decorator or a helpful relative.
Christian has to pick up his children from kindergarten
Christian is going to pick up his children from pre-school
Christian must pick up his/her/their children from the kindergarten
Christian is going to pick up his (Henrik’s)/her/their children from pre-school
In the second sentence, Christian is not picking up his own children from pre-school (unless we’re referring to shared children in the “their” version).
Unfortunately, his, his, his and hers cannot always easily be deduced from this subject-object pattern. In the following sentences:
Christian likes the food that his girlfriend prepares
Christian likes the food that his partner prepares
Jens is waiting to go to bed because his son hasn’t come home yet
Jens is waiting up since his son is not home yet
Kathrine and her boyfriend are going to a restaurant tonight
Kathrine and her partner are going out for dinner tonight
You might ask yourself at this point, “Why not ‘sin‘ all of a sudden? There’s an ‘ownership’ connection in play, right?”
The explanation for this lies in what the subject and object of the sentence is, and whether it is split into clauses.
Christian likes the food is the main clause (main sentence) in the first sentence. “Christian” is the subject.
which his girlfriend cooks is a subordinate clause (secondary sentence or conjunction). Here, his girlfriend is the subject in it. Since his girlfriend is not an object, it cannot take the sin pronoun.
Not that a main clause makes sense without the subordinate clause, but a subordinate clause cannot be a standalone sentence – this is how you tell the difference between the two types.
In the second example, Jens is waiting to go to bed is the main clause with Jens as the subject, and because his son has not come home yet is the subordinate clause in which his son is the subject.
In the final example which unlike the others is single-clause, Kathrine and her boyfriend are the subject together, so hers mist be used, not sin.
When you are speaking Danish in real life, you probably don’t have time to think about sentence structure and subject-object relations. If you’re in doubt, it’s probably better to hedge your bets and go with hans or hers – regional dialects of Danish in Jutland sometimes use these instead of sin and sit anyway.