# That's mine.



## Aleppan

How do you say "That's mine"?

הוא לי
הוא שלי

This is assuming that the object referred to by "that" is masculine and singular. Otherwise you substitute היא or הם or הן for הוא, of course.


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## elroy

זה/זאת שלי


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## Abaye

In addition to @elroy's: You'd hear the feminine form less often. זה here is general and in most cases doesn't imply specifically masculine. זאת is used to emphasise a feminine nature:

ואהבתי את שתיהן אלי
זאת שלי היתה וזאת שלי


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## elroy

Aleppan said:


> This is assuming that the object referred to by "that" is masculine


Oops, I missed this. 🤦🏻


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## Ali Smith

זה and זאת mean "this", right?
הוא and היא mean either "he/she" or "that", right?


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## Abaye

The common translation is:
זה / זאת = this, that, it.
הוא / היא = he / she.

Yet I'm sure you can find many examples of different usage, there's no 1-1 mapping.


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## elroy

Abaye said:


> You'd hear the feminine form less often. זה here is general and in most cases doesn't imply specifically masculine.


This is interesting.  In Arabic, if I were to point to a feminine object, like a towel (منشفة) or a car (سيارة), I would use the feminine pronoun (هاي إلي).  I guess you would say זה שלי?


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## Abaye

When referring to an object, for example a towel מגבת, the distinction of feminine/masculine is often lost. I can imagine a situation in which a towel is thrown on the floor and the mother asks her children של מי זה but not של מי זאת. If the question is של מי המגבת ה__, it will be of course זאת.


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## elroy

In Arabic I would expect لمين هاي؟, which would be short for لمين هاي المنشفة؟.

Would you also say, referring to two towels, המגבת הזאת שלו, אבל *זה* שלי?


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## Abaye

elroy said:


> Would you also say, referring to two towels, המגבת הזאת שלו, אבל *זה* שלי?


No, that would be weird. When the context (of feminine) is set, both instances are זאת.


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## elroy

I remember a Spanish-speaking friend looking at my car after it had gotten dented and saying “Pobrecit*o*!” (مسكين/מסכן — i.e. *masculine*) and that sounding totally off to me — even though she wasn’t speaking Arabic — because in Arabic a car is feminine!  (It’s masculine in Spanish.)  I wonder if a noun’s gender is more inextricably associated with the noun in Arabic than it is in Hebrew.


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## Abaye

But in Hebrew "car" can be מכונית (feminine) or אוטו (masculine). So no inherent gender.


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## elroy

Sure, but for most objects there’s only one (predominant) term, and hence one gender. My specific anecdote involved a car, but it could’ve been any other object and I presume I would’ve had the same reaction. 

If your towel had gotten damaged in the dryer and someone said מסכן (masculine), would that sound okay to you?


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## Abaye

We carefully preserve the gender in most cases. Often use of a neuter term is limited to זה (and maybe very few other words). I guess it's influenced by the default gender in Hebrew which is masculine: if I say אני רואה אנשים ברחוב it can be men, women, both.


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## Ali Smith

Abaye said:


> The common translation is:
> זה / זאת = this, that, it.
> הוא / היא = he / she.


But doesn't האיש ההוא mean 'that man' and הבת ההיא 'that girl'?


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## Drink

We're discussing pronouns here, not determiners.


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## Abaye

Drink said:


> We're discussing pronouns here, not determiners.


And specifically demonstrative pronouns, כינוי רומז.


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