Questions & Answers about Я не хочу говорить о своей личной жизни.
Why did we use своей instead of моей here?
We use своей because it reflects back to the subject of the sentence, Я (I). In Russian, when a possessive word refers to the subject's own thing, you use the reflexive possessive pronoun свой. While о моей wouldn't be grammatically wrong here, о своей is much more natural and standard.
What case is своей in, and how does its ending work?
It is in the Prepositional case, triggered by the preposition о (about). The pronoun свой declines using standard adjective endings. Because the noun it modifies, жизнь (life), is feminine, свой takes the feminine Prepositional ending -ей, giving us своей.
Why does жизни end in -и here instead of the usual Prepositional -е?
While most feminine nouns take -е in the Prepositional case (like машина becoming о машине), жизнь belongs to a group of feminine nouns that end in a soft sign (-ь). For these 3rd declension nouns, the Genitive, Dative, and Prepositional cases all take the ending -и.
Why use the imperfective verb говорить rather than the perfective сказать?
Говорить (to speak/talk) is imperfective, focusing on the general process of talking. The speaker wants to avoid the activity entirely. Using a perfective verb like сказать (to say) would sound like you are refusing to say one specific, isolated fact. Additionally, negated verbs of desire like не хотеть usually pair with imperfective verbs to show total unwillingness to do the action.