how can I differentiate
she sees her mother - elle voit sa mère
from
she sees his mother - elle voit sa mère?
I cannot say 'elle voit son mère' since mère is feminine, right?
Thank you for using the Jiskha Homework Help Forum. Yes, at first that seems confusiong because "elle voit sa mère" could be either = she sees HIS mother OR she sees HER mother; even she sees ITS mother. To clarify that you can use a Disjunctive or Stress pronoun .
Elle voit la mère d'elle. (clear it's her mother.)
Elle voit la mère de lui. (Clear it's his mother.)
Those Disjunctive/Stress Pronouns are:
moi, toi, lui, elle, nousn,vous, eux, elles
They are used after a preposition, when the pronoun has no verb expressed, in a com pound subject or object, for emphasis, after ce + être, with -même (s) to express the English -self (-selves).
Mme
merci beaucoup
To differentiate between "she sees her mother" and "she sees his mother" in French, you need to pay attention to the possessive pronoun used before the noun "mother".
For "she sees her mother" - "elle voit sa mère": The possessive pronoun "sa" is used. The use of "sa" indicates that the subject (she) is referring to her own mother.
For "she sees his mother" - "elle voit sa mère": The possessive pronoun "sa" is also used. However, in this case, "sa" does not refer to "his" but rather to "her" (the subject, she). This is because in French, possessive pronouns agree with the gender of the subject, not the object. So, even though "mother" (mère) is feminine, the possessive pronoun "sa" is still used for both "her" and "his".
To express "his mother", you would use the masculine possessive pronoun "son". Therefore, if you wanted to say "she sees his mother", it would be "elle voit son mère". However, this sentence is incorrect because there is a mismatch in gender agreement with the possessive pronoun.
Instead, you need to say "she sees his mother" as "elle voit sa mère" (using the same possessive pronoun as "she sees her mother"). In this case, the context or additional information would be required to clarify whose mother is being referred to.
In summary, the same possessive pronoun "sa" is used for both "she sees her mother" and "she sees his mother" in French, and the difference is determined by the context or additional information provided.