Breakdown of Hon skrubbar sig i ansiktet med peelingen.
hon
she
i
in
sig
oneself / himself / herself / themselves
med
with
Questions & Answers about Hon skrubbar sig i ansiktet med peelingen.
Why does the Swedish sentence say skrubbar sig i ansiktet instead of translating 'scrubs her face' directly as skrubbar hennes ansikte?
In Swedish, actions performed on your own body usually use a reflexive structure: verb + reflexive pronoun (sig) + preposition (i) + definite body part (ansiktet). While skrubbar hennes ansikte is grammatically possible, it sounds unnatural and could even imply she is scrubbing another woman's face.
How do I know to use the preposition i here rather than på or om?
Prepositions with body parts often just have to be memorized, but i is standard for actions directed at the face and head. You will also see it in similar everyday phrases like tvätta sig i ansiktet (wash one's face) or slå sig i huvudet (hit one's head).
Why is the definite form ansiktet (the face) used here instead of the indefinite?
When you use the reflexive structure with a body part, Swedish always uses the definite form. The reflexive pronoun sig already tells us whose face it is, so Swedish literally says 'scrubs herself in the face' rather than 'scrubs herself in her face'.
Peelingen is clearly borrowed from English. Do all English loanwords ending in '-ing' work this way?