Hello folks, or should I say Salvete.
I’m going through this book and the repetition is making sense. Get it all drilled into the old brain.
However, I’ve come up against a problem:
Chapter 4, excercise 5: I just can’t get my head around it. I know it should be simple, but for some reason it just isn’t clicking. I don’t want to move on until it’s second nature, so could one of you educated people please explain it to me?
Pretty please?
Hi, there,
You use suus, sua, suum (Accusative: suum / suam; Ablative: suo / sua) when it refers to the SUBJECT: Iulius pecuniam suam (id est Iulii) numerat.
You use EIUS when it refers to someone or something different from the subject: Medus pecuniam eius (id est Iulii, NOT Medi) habet. If I say: Medus pecuniam SUAM habet, it means Medus has its own money, not Iulius’ (=eius).
Let’s try number 1: Ubi est pecunia Iulii? Pecunia eius (= Iulii) in sacculo est. If I say “Pecunia sua”, as “sua” refers to the subject, it will mean “Pecunia pecuniae”, which doesn’t make any sense here.
Number 2: Iulius pecuniam suam (Iulii = its own) in mensa ponit. If I say “Iulius pecuniam eius (not his own, somebody’s else; let’s say: Aemiliae) in mensa ponit”, it would be grammatically correct, but it would mean something else. So, it depends on the context.
Number 3: Aemilia pecuniam eius (=Iulii, as it indicates) videt. “Aemilia pecuniam SUAM (=Aemiliae) videt” is grammatically correct but has another sense. As I said, it depends on the context.
Hope this helps
Thank you.
Paul.