Reflection 7

[Carly DeFaria]

This week I have been focusing on possessive pronouns and how they change depending on the gender and number of the possession. In Hindi there are pronouns for me, we, he/she and they (however as stated there are two different versions depending on whether he/she is close in proximity to you or far away), and three different forms of you (a formal one, a friendly one, and a rarely used intimate one). These pronouns usually take the ending -raa or -kaa when in basic possessive cases. For example मैं -->मेरा (main-->meraa)    आप-->आपका  (aap-->apkaa ) . However, as stated these change depending on gender of the object being possessed. Meraa becomes meree in cases of singular feminine words, mere in plural masculine, and stays meree in plural feminine. Overall this is very similar to things I've learned in French. The pronouns change in the same way that Hindi ones do. However what I did find interesting is that the gender of nouns in Hindi rarely matches the gender of nouns in French. I am curious as to how gender of nouns developed and why it is different in these Indo European languages that are thought to have a common ancestor.