Thread: "be responsible for"

Originally Posted by shnuddy

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With all due respect to iCake's Russian version, I think that the usage of себя is not correct here. To me it means that the child was made to wait for himself, which is hard to imagine in real life. I would use его instead of себя.

"в ответе за то, что" basically means to be responsible for something or someone. Two well-known expressions among Russians leap to my mind.

1) Мы в ответе за тех, кого приручили.
2) Пионер - ты за всё в ответе!

Don't see anything bad in my sentence. As it-ogo said it may be better to omit себя but it's still not required. As for Он заставил своего ребёнка ждать ЕГО That's really nonsense. Because the question arises immidiately.

Кого его? Because его doesn't refer to the subject, which is он, but refers to somebody else and that somebody isn't mentioned

Originally Posted by iCake

Don't see anything bad in my sentence. As it-ogo said it may be better to omit себя but it's still not required. As for Он заставил своего ребёнка ждать ЕГО That's really nonsense. Because the question arises immidiately.

Кого его? Because его doesn't refer to the subject, which is он, but refers to somebody else and that somebody isn't mentioned

As long as we have only two persons in our sentence any ambiguity is ruled out. You are correct that that somebody isn't mentioned, hence, it would be incorrect to refer to someone who hasn't been mentioned. In this case the only pronoun which can refer to "его" is "он", which is the subject of the sentence.