Breakdown of Var och en hämtar sin flytväst.
hämta
to fetch
sin
his/her/its/their own (en-word)
var och en
each one
flytvästen
the life jacket
Questions & Answers about Var och en hämtar sin flytväst.
Is var och en considered singular or plural here?
It is grammatically singular, just like 'each one' or 'everybody' in English. Even though it refers to a group of people in reality, Swedish grammar treats it as a single third-person entity. This directly affects our choice of possessive pronoun later in the sentence.
The English translation says 'their life jacket', so why don't we use deras?
In English, we often use the singular 'their' to refer back to 'each one'. In Swedish, because the subject var och en is doing the fetching, we must use the reflexive possessive pronoun sin to mean 'their own'. If you used deras here, it would mean each person is fetching a life jacket that belongs to a completely different group of people!
Why is the possessive pronoun sin rather than sitt or sina?
The reflexive possessive must match the gender and number of the object being owned. Because a life jacket is a singular en-word (en flytväst), we use the en-word form sin. If each person were fetching a singular ett-word like an apple, it would be sitt äpple, and if they were fetching multiple jackets, it would be sina flytvästar.
Could I just say alla (everyone) instead of var och en?