Breakdown of Hon berättade allt om sin samling.
hon
she
berätta
to tell
allt
everything / all (neuter)
sin
his/her/its/their own (en-word)
om
about
samlingen
the collection
Questions & Answers about Hon berättade allt om sin samling.
Why do we use allt here instead of alla or all?
When used on its own as a pronoun to mean "everything" (a general concept or situation), Swedish uses the neuter form allt. If you used alla, it would mean "everyone" or "all of them". The form all is only used together with uncountable en-words, like all mat (all food).
Why is the word for "her" translated as sin instead of hennes?
Sin is a reflexive possessive pronoun, which means it refers back to the subject of the sentence. Because the subject (hon) is the one who owns the collection, you must use sin to mean "her own". If the sentence used hennes, it would mean she was talking about another woman's collection!
How do we know to use sin rather than sitt for the collection?
The reflexive pronoun must match the gender of the noun it describes. Samling is an en-word (en samling), so it takes sin. If she was talking about an ett-word, like a house (ett hus), it would be sitt hus. As a helpful shortcut: almost all Swedish nouns ending in -ing are en-words.
What tense is berättade, and what is its infinitive form?
It is in the past tense. The infinitive form is att berätta (to tell). It belongs to the most common group of Swedish verbs (Group 1), which end in -a in the infinitive and form the past tense by simply adding -de.
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