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I'm reading Terra Aluvis, volume 2 (pre-release), in German.
In a couple of places, it uses "seine" to refer to "das Mädchen". For example, "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände". (And she's looking at her own hand, not someone else's). That sounds totally wrong to me. "Seine" is what you use for males. But "ihre" is what you use for females. Even if Mädchen is a neuter word as indicated by the "Das", "seine" still sounds totally wrong for it.
So I looked it up.
heisst es "das Mädchen und sein Bruder" oder "das Mädchen und ihr Bruder"
Based on the answers, "seine" is grammatically correct. But several of the replies (and they sound like native German speakers) reflect my own gut feeling, that it should be "ihr", ganz klar, NATÜRLICH.
And now I realize that German doesn't have a separate pronoun for "its". The same word "sein" is used for both "his" and "its". Yet I generally translate it as "his". So "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände" sounds to me not like "The girl looked at its hands" (which is bad enough), but rather "The girl looked at his hands" which makes no sense, unless I imagine her as a gender-bending girl.
.
Another thing that has confused me is the use of Ihr/Euch/Eurer for 2nd person singular pronouns. Normally you use "Du" for friends/family, or "Sie" for strangers/politeness/formal situations. Ihr/Euch is the informal 2nd person plural, not singular. But in the book some of the characters are royalty or nobility, so this usage seems to correspond to the English royal we/majestic plural. Looking at the book again, now I see that it is always capitalized in the royal sense, but lower case in the 2nd person plural sense.
.
erbarmen - to arouse someone's pity; to take pity on; to have mercy on.
Erbarmen - mercy/pity
erbarmenswert - pitiable, wretched, pitiful
erbarmungslos - pitiless, merciless
erbarmungsvoll - compassionate, full of pity
erbärmlich - pitiful, wretched, terrible
Erbärmlichkeit - wretchedness, misery, awfulness, terribleness
barmherzig - compassionate
Barmherzigkeit - compassion, mercy
.
leiden - to suffer
Leiden - suffering, tribulation
Leidenschaft - passion
leidenschaftlich - passionate
leidenschaftslos - dispassionate
Leid - sorrow, grief; misfortune, harm.
leid tun - to be sorry
leidlich - reasonable, fair; more or less, so-so.
.
hervorragend, herausragend - outstanding
sagenhaft - incredible
zaghaft - timid
.
Umgehung (accent on 2nd syllable) - avoidance, circumvention, bypass
umgehen (transitive verb)(accent on 2nd syllable) - to avoid.
umgehen (intransitive verb)(accent on 1st syllable) - to walk around; to treat/handle something; ...
umgehend (accent on 1st syllable) - immediate; immediately. Etymology explained here
In a couple of places, it uses "seine" to refer to "das Mädchen". For example, "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände". (And she's looking at her own hand, not someone else's). That sounds totally wrong to me. "Seine" is what you use for males. But "ihre" is what you use for females. Even if Mädchen is a neuter word as indicated by the "Das", "seine" still sounds totally wrong for it.
So I looked it up.
heisst es "das Mädchen und sein Bruder" oder "das Mädchen und ihr Bruder"
Based on the answers, "seine" is grammatically correct. But several of the replies (and they sound like native German speakers) reflect my own gut feeling, that it should be "ihr", ganz klar, NATÜRLICH.
And now I realize that German doesn't have a separate pronoun for "its". The same word "sein" is used for both "his" and "its". Yet I generally translate it as "his". So "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände" sounds to me not like "The girl looked at its hands" (which is bad enough), but rather "The girl looked at his hands" which makes no sense, unless I imagine her as a gender-bending girl.
.
Another thing that has confused me is the use of Ihr/Euch/Eurer for 2nd person singular pronouns. Normally you use "Du" for friends/family, or "Sie" for strangers/politeness/formal situations. Ihr/Euch is the informal 2nd person plural, not singular. But in the book some of the characters are royalty or nobility, so this usage seems to correspond to the English royal we/majestic plural. Looking at the book again, now I see that it is always capitalized in the royal sense, but lower case in the 2nd person plural sense.
.
erbarmen - to arouse someone's pity; to take pity on; to have mercy on.
Erbarmen - mercy/pity
erbarmenswert - pitiable, wretched, pitiful
erbarmungslos - pitiless, merciless
erbarmungsvoll - compassionate, full of pity
erbärmlich - pitiful, wretched, terrible
Erbärmlichkeit - wretchedness, misery, awfulness, terribleness
barmherzig - compassionate
Barmherzigkeit - compassion, mercy
.
leiden - to suffer
Leiden - suffering, tribulation
Leidenschaft - passion
leidenschaftlich - passionate
leidenschaftslos - dispassionate
Leid - sorrow, grief; misfortune, harm.
leid tun - to be sorry
leidlich - reasonable, fair; more or less, so-so.
.
hervorragend, herausragend - outstanding
sagenhaft - incredible
zaghaft - timid
.
Umgehung (accent on 2nd syllable) - avoidance, circumvention, bypass
umgehen (transitive verb)(accent on 2nd syllable) - to avoid.
umgehen (intransitive verb)(accent on 1st syllable) - to walk around; to treat/handle something; ...
umgehend (accent on 1st syllable) - immediate; immediately. Etymology explained here