Thread: This land is your land

What's the story with "Mine" and "yours".

I never even really realized that we had these words untill i realize that russian doesn't.

Again, i cant think of why i would use "this house is mine" over "this is my house". exept maybe to show some stressed point.

"This house is MINE, not PUTIN'S!"

or something like that.

What is the rules on this, does anyone know ?

'my', 'your' is strictly speaking a determiner, because it qualifies the noun that comes after it. You can't say 'I love my' and then stop..
Whereas mine is a pronoun (just as 'I' and 'it' are pronouns), because it stands in place of a noun. Mine, yours etc. are called 'possessive pronouns' for obvious reasons.

I don't think Russian makes the distinction, i.e. they use мой for both purposes. Is that right? Oh and of course there is also свой in the appropriate context.

I'm not sure if that really answered the question.

About choosing the pronoun instead of the noun (i.e. mine/house) well I guess, as you say, it's about emphasis. The emphasis is on possession if you use the possessive pronoun.

Mine also used to be used before a vowel, as in the hymn:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory..."

However this has been replaced by my with the next word pronounced with a y at the beginning, so we have "my yeyes" and ""my yolder brother" etc, rather like the pronounciation of "the" changes from "ther" before a consonant to "thee" before a vowel.

I think it isn't only for emphasis. For instance in this sentence "This is my pen, yours is over there", it's used just not to repeat "pen" ("your pen"). As well as using "one" ("your one is over there").

If i'm wrong, correct me pls.

PS: waxwing, you're right, into russian "my" and "mine" translate as "мой"
this is my house - это мой дом
this house is mine - этот дом мой

Originally Posted by Oddo

"Mine eyes have seen the glory..."

Of the coming of the lord!
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
hee has loosed the fateful lightning
of his terrible swift sword

his truth is marching on!

glory glory halleluyuh!
glory glory hallelujah!
glooooory glory halleluuuuujah

his truth is marching on!

I did this from memory.

By the way mine/thine are archaic words, and have been replaced by the modern my/thy (which has been replaced by your).

Although, do not throw out the use of mine entirely!!! We still use it!! Eg, "this one is mine, that one is yours".

The hymn uses mine because it sounds better, and it is a hymn so it's trying to get that old Middle English feel.

His truth is marching on!!

"Mine" and "thine" are simply closer to the Germanic pronouns (which are genitive of "I" and "thou"). Contemporary German: "mein", "dein".

Two different forms (my/mine) exist probably because of the reduction of gender and case-specific inflections in the more frequent relative form (my).

For something funny re "this land is your land, this land is my land" go to

www.jibjab.com

It's a funny video on Bush and Kerry. Takes a little while to load sometimes.

2004? Geez...

Originally Posted by strawberryfynch

2004? Geez...

Did you really have to dig that up? Or are you just trying to increase your posts?

Either way, it's annoying.