What's the difference between 'swoje' & 'moje'?

Well, the essential truth about "swój" is that it can be replaced (in certain sentences) by a respective possessive pronoun except for the third person of both singular and plural.

Ja kocham swoją [moją] żonę.
Ty kochasz swoją [twoją] żonę.
On kocha swoją [----] żonę. (On kocha jego żonę means something different.)

My kochamy swoje [nasze] żony.
Wy kochacie swoje [wasze] żony.
Oni kochają swoje [----] żony. (Oni kochają ich żony means something different.)

The "his" in an English out-of-context sentence "He loves his wife" would certainly mean "swoją". Of course, there may exist a context to the sentence which would make this "his" mean "jego" (in the sense: He loves his friend's wife). Thus, for the third person, the English his/her would mean either "swoją/swojego" or "jego/jej" in Polish.

besides the his/her example which has a different meaning like you were saying, could you provide some examples where "swoj" is absolutely required, and "moj" would be incorrect?

"Han tog SIN hat och gick SIN vag." imot "Han tog HANS hat och gick HANS vag."

In the first sentence (learnt by all Swedes as well as foreigners such as myself studying Swedish!), "He took his hat and went on his merry way." makes perfect sense. The second, literally, "He took someone else's hat and went on someone else's merry way." sounds quite amusing in Swedish, come to think of it, in Danish and Norwegian too.-:)

I think the analogy between Polish 'swój', 'swoja', 'swoje' and Swedish 'sin', 'sitt', 'sina' is abundantly clear at this point. LOL

and in the end they both love the same woman ;)

Exactly this is also true about my native language, but I've never thought about it. And it is a situation where people should be careful, because it's easy to make this mistake if you don't think. But if you consider swój as my own, your own, his own etc. it's not a problem.


Yes.


A drama of three.. hehe. :)