Distinguish meanings of их

Question

I came across a sentence on Duolingo that said

Я пишу стихи, а потом читаю их маме.

I know that this sounds pretty 'out there,' but how do you know whether the sentence means

I write poems, and then read them to mom.

or

I write poems, and then read to their mom.

?

I may be wrong, but I think the best way to disambiguate your second sentence is to use их twice: ... читаю их их маме. — CocoPop, Oct 26 '16 at 03:08
@CocoPop or, somewhat more elegantly, а потом их читаю их маме. — Nikolay Ershov, Oct 26 '16 at 08:43

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 25 '16 at 21:52

3

Definitely the first option:

I write poems, and then read them to mom.

Because there is no other plural nouns in the sentence except стихи.

answered Oct 25 '16 at 21:52

Dmitry

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But there's no way to be 100% sure, right? – casey Oct 25 '16 at 21:58
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@casey Without the context, yes. You can only be 99.9...% sure. But I believe it's typical to human languages at all. – Dmitry Oct 25 '16 at 22:09
Я читаю их(стихи) своей (не их) маме. If you read to "their" mother, there should be an object, otherwise it's hard to understand. – V.V. Oct 26 '16 at 03:44
Во-первых, кого "их"... – bipll Oct 26 '16 at 21:38

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '16 at 07:44

3

oh, it is really an ambiguous conctruction.

but the first option comes to mind earlier, since the verb читать needs logically an object in Accusative case.

answered Oct 26 '16 at 07:44

user2957954

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 26 '16 at 08:39

In spoken language there's an alternate form which could sometimes be used to avoid such ambuguity. Of course, it's considered absolutely wrong (please, don't hurt me too much for even mentioning it) but in reality we all say such things from time to time:

I write poems, and then read to their mom --> Я пишу стихи, а потом читаю ихней маме

Also you can shift word order a little to prevent any possible misunderstanding, for example:

I write poems, and then read them to mom --> Я пишу стихи, а потом их читаю маме

So returning to your question, yes, there's some room for ambuiguity here, but typically the context is enough to understand it correctly. If still unsure, there's a plenty of variations to avoid any mistake completely.

I know my second translation is really weird and probably wouldn't be the usual one, but I just know that so much of the Russian language is distinct and unambiguous so I thought there might be a way to know for sure which one is which just from the original construction. — casey, Oct 26 '16 at 10:48
@casey In fact it's ambiguous. So it's a small mistake when it's written. But for common spoken language it's OK. — Matt, Oct 26 '16 at 12:28

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 26 '16 at 18:41

0

You can use a colloquial form "ихней маме".

answered Oct 26 '16 at 18:41

Anixx

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Distinguish meanings of их

4 Answers4