Breakdown of Она часто говорит со свекровью о своих дочерях.
она
she / it (for a feminine noun)
часто
often
говорить
to speak, to talk
о
about (о, об, обо)
дочь
daughter
с
with (also со)
свой
one's own
свекровь
mother-in-law (husband's mother)
Questions & Answers about Она часто говорит со свекровью о своих дочерях.
Why is the word for daughters дочерях instead of having a normal plural ending?
Дочь (daughter) is a special irregular noun. Whenever it changes case (except for the accusative singular), it adds the extra stem piece -ер- before the ending. Because the sentence says 'about daughters', we need the prepositional plural case. We add -ер- to the root, followed by the normal prepositional plural ending -ях, giving us дочерях.
Why use своих for 'her' instead of её?
In Russian, when the owner of an object is also the subject of the sentence (here, Она), you must use a form of the reflexive pronoun свой to mean 'one's own'. If the sentence said о её дочерях, it would imply she is talking about some other woman's daughters! Here, it takes the prepositional plural form своих to match дочерях.
Why is the preposition со used here instead of just с?
The preposition с (with) changes to со to make pronunciation easier when the following word begins with certain tricky consonant clusters. This almost always happens before words starting with с or з followed by another consonant. Because свекровью starts with св-, Russian uses со.
What case is свекровью and why does it have that -ью ending?
It is in the instrumental case because it follows the preposition со (with). The dictionary form is свекровь (mother-in-law), which is a feminine noun ending in a soft sign. For these feminine nouns (like ночь or тетрадь), the instrumental singular case is formed by adding -ю right after the soft sign, creating the unique -ью ending.
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