Divehi to Swedish: the owner in a reported event may be outside the nearest clause
A report can mention two people without making them co-owners
Divehi personal possessives identify an owner through a genitive form, such as standard ēnāge. Swedish distinguishes a subject-related possessive from a personal possessive according to the clause containing it. A report with two participants can therefore require a decision that cannot be made by choosing one Swedish equivalent for the source genitive.
Fritz also describes timā as a form that can refer to I in reported speech, rather than an ordinary object reflexive referring back to a subject. A possessive connected with that reported viewpoint must be interpreted as somebody’s ownership first. The word self in a grammatical explanation is not sufficient evidence that Swedish sin, sitt, or sina is required.
The Swedish Language Council explains a basic same-clause pattern: reflexive possession refers to the subject of that clause, while a personal possessive can refer to someone in another clause. Its reported ticket example contrasts hans biljetter with sina biljetter. The former can identify the main-clause speaker’s tickets; the latter identifies the embedded clause subject’s tickets in that example.
Changing the possessive can change who lost the tickets
Imagine a Divehi report in which Ali says that his brother discarded Ali’s tickets. The brother performs the discarding, but Ali owns the tickets. A Swedish reflexive tied to the brother as the embedded subject would change the ownership claim. The translation could keep both names and the correct event while still assigning the loss to the wrong person.
Now change the intention: Ali says that his brother discarded the brother’s own tickets. The action and participants remain similar, but the owner is different. This is precisely the kind of distinction the Swedish basic pattern can express. It should follow the Divehi reference, rather than be selected simply because a reflexive sounds more idiomatic next to a repeated third-person mention.
The question also arises when the recipient is the owner. The Swedish authority’s gift example uses a personal possessive to refer to the girl receiving her tricycle, rather than to the subject who gives it. A Divehi transfer message must therefore keep the actor, recipient, and owner distinct. Being the person most affected by a transfer does not automatically make someone the subject to which a reflexive should refer.
Direct quotation can preserve the source speaker’s I or my viewpoint, whereas an indirect Swedish report reorganizes that reference around its own clauses. Moving between the two styles without revisiting ownership can silently change the possessor. If the Divehi passage reports another person’s words, establish whose belongings the reported person actually means before choosing the target structure.
The Language Council notes that some special constructions allow variation, so the basic pattern should not be presented as an exceptionless rule for every Swedish sentence. In an ordinary finite report, however, clause boundaries provide a concrete check on ownership. Trace the source owner and the target clause subject separately; then choose the possessive that keeps the same person’s belongings at issue.
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