Breakdown of Почему ты всегда теряешь свой блокнот и свою папку?
и
and
ты
you (singular)
всегда
always
почему
why
свой
one's own
терять
to lose
блокнот
notebook (notepad)
папка
folder
Questions & Answers about Почему ты всегда теряешь свой блокнот и свою папку?
Why does the sentence use свой and свою instead of твой and твою for 'your'?
The word свой is a reflexive possessive pronoun meaning 'one's own'. It points back to the subject of the sentence, which here is ты (you). While using твой and твою wouldn't be strictly wrong, native Russian speakers strongly prefer using свой whenever the owner and the subject of the sentence are the same person.
Why does the form of 'your' change from свой to свою in the same sentence?
Pronouns must match the gender of the noun they describe. Because the items are the direct objects being lost, they are in the accusative case. Блокнот is a masculine inanimate noun, so its accusative form looks exactly like its dictionary form, giving us свой блокнот. Папка (folder) is feminine, so in the accusative case it changes to папку, and the matching pronoun changes to свою.
Could we group them and just say свои блокнот и папку using the plural form?
No, in Russian you generally cannot use a plural pronoun to group together singular nouns of different genders. It is much more natural to either repeat the pronoun to match each noun's specific gender (свой блокнот и свою папку) or just use it once before the first noun (свой блокнот и папку).
Why do we use the imperfective verb теряешь (to lose) here?
Теряешь is the present tense informal 'you' form of терять. We must use the imperfective aspect here because the word всегда (always) indicates that losing things is a repeated, habitual action rather than a one-time event.
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