If you ever took a Spanish or French language class, you were probably surprised to learn that, in those languages, third person possessive pronouns are determined by the gender of the thing possessed rather than the gender of the person who possesses it. So for example in French, sa maison means either “his house” or “her house” depending on the context. Similarly if we’re talking about someone who owns multiple houses, ses maisons means “his houses” or “her houses” again according to context.
This pattern is, surprisingly, far more common among the Indoeuropean languages. The Germanic group is an exception.
I was sure surprised to see that was "Masculine ‘su’ " (his) and a “Femenine ‘su’” (her) in English when I learned it, in Spanish there’s only “su”, gender of the person possesing the item nothwithstanding.
As you said it’s “Su casa” o “Sus casas”, not “His/Her house” or “His/Her houses”.
Sometimes, when it seems important to make it clear whether it is his or her house it can be said “su casa de él” (his house) or “su casa de ella” (her house). It sounds stilted, legalistic and pedantic, but sometimes it is necessary. I don’t know whether this is a Spain-Spanish thing or LA-Spanish thing too.
In German, the possessive pronouns third person singular depend both on the gender of the person and the object. Female pronouns are ihr/ihre, male sein/seine, ihr/sein for neuter or male objects, ihre/seine for female. So it’s ihre/seine Flasche (f), but ihr/sein Buch (n).
Russian is quirky. First and second person possessives inflect across five cases of three genders or plural, but third person just uses the genitive inflection of the pronoun. Your, my, our or your behave like adjectives, but his, her and their are just added in words.
ETA: To be clear, the more heavily inflected Germanic languages like German and Icelandic do also inflect for case, gender, and number of the thing possessed, but those inflections are postfixes. In my previous post I was referring only to the pronoun roots (English has only the roots because there are no postfixed inflections.)
…which leads us nicely to the subnivean zone, a sheltered area under snow.
Subnivean fauna includes small mammals such as mice, voles, shrews, and lemmings that must rely on winter snow cover for survival. These mammals move under the snow for protection from heat loss and some predators. In winter regions that do not have permafrost, the subnivean zone maintains a temperature of close to 32 °F (0 °C) regardless of the temperature above the snow cover, once the snow cover has reached a depth of six inches (15 cm) or more. The sinuous tunnels left by these small mammals can be seen from above when the snow melts to the final inch or so.
Which is not to imply that ice does not get much colder than the freezing temperature. In fact, when temperatures get very cold, ice becomes a little less treacherous because it no longer bears a lubricating film of liquid water on its surface.
As it happens, I found a YouTube clip today about how as recently as 1978 Russia suffered a cold snap so severe even by Russian standards that it threatened to collapse their infrastructure, with temperatures below -50°C.
Those damned subnivean voles girdle my apple saplings when the snow is deep. And chew up flower roots in my perennial flower beds. Never do we even see the damage until spring. Then you can see the pattern of tunnels on top of the soil. Little shits.
Similarly, when temperatures get cold enough (somewhere in the vicinity of 0 F, though of course it’s a fuzzy line), snow will no longer melt on the surface of the clothes of someone appropriately-dressed for the weather, which can make such extreme temperatures slightly more tolerable than temperatures a little bit warmer.
“Very cold” doesn’t have to mean polar depths of cold either. We had a ice storm here just over a year ago when the temperature never rose above the low 20s for several days. Not being used to such conditions, I was astonished by how everything outdoors was as dry as a rock in the driest desert. You could put objects of paper or wool on the ground and they wouldn’t get wet in the least.
This kept looking like new-fallen snow for almost the entire duration of the event, unlike real snow which gets spoiled by the tracks left behind by tires and shoes.
