Breakdown of Я часто рекомендую эту книгу своим друзьям.
книга
book
я
I
друг
friend
этот
this [f: эта, n: это]
Questions & Answers about Я часто рекомендую эту книгу своим друзьям.
Why is "my friends" in the Dative case (своим друзьям) here without a preposition?
In Russian, verbs that involve giving, advising, or assisting someone—like рекомендовать (to recommend), помогать (to help), or советовать (to advise)—take the Dative case for the person receiving the action. Just like you give something to someone, you recommend to them, and the Dative case handles the "to" without needing a preposition.
Why use своим instead of моим if the sentence means "my" friends?
You could grammatically use моим here, but it sounds much more natural to use the reflexive possessive pronoun свой. In Russian, whenever the "owner" of the object is also the subject of the sentence (here, Я am the subject, and they are my friends), you use the appropriate form of свой. Here it is своим to match the Dative plural noun друзьям.
The dictionary form is рекомендовать, so why does it change to рекомендую? Where did the -у- come from?
Verbs ending in -овать or -евать drop that chunk and replace it with -у- (or -ю-) when conjugated in the present tense. So, the stem рекомендов- becomes рекоменду-, giving us я рекомендую, ты рекомендуешь, and so on.
Why does the Dative plural of "friend" end in -ям instead of the standard -ам?