Amharic to Georgian: rich verbs need a role-by-role comparison
A shared ability to mark participants is only a starting point
Amharic cross-references a subject on the verb and can attach object pronouns. Georgian verbal morphology can also agree with several participants, including direct and indirect objects. This is an important resemblance, but the two languages do not assign every person and role to matching pieces of a word.
For an Amharic giving or telling message, identify the doer, recipient, and thing transferred before inspecting Georgian morphology. Keep those roles in view when the target form changes. A Georgian verb that looks very different from a vocabulary entry may encode several participants rather than introduce a different action.
Negation distinguishes not doing from not being able
The Georgian reference distinguishes არ, ar, not, from ვერ, ver, not able. These short forms are useful landmarks for a translated Amharic response. A refusal, an inability, and an action that simply did not occur should not be collapsed into a single negative meaning.
Before translating a reply about a missed appointment, specify whether the person could not attend, chose not to attend, or is being told not to attend. These statements may concern the same event, but they make different claims about responsibility and possibility. Check the target negative against that claim, not merely against the presence of a negative element in the Amharic source.
The location can be attached to the noun
Georgian სახლში, saxlshi, means in the house, combining the noun stem with a locative postposition. The related სახლია, saxlia, means is a house, with a copular element attached. Their resemblance is a useful warning: a compact word beginning with the same noun can express a location or a predication.
For an Amharic address message, determine whether the writer is saying what a building is or where an activity happens. Do not equate the whole Georgian expression with house and ignore the attached material. That last portion can carry precisely the distinction a visitor needs to find an event rather than merely identify a type of building.
A case change does not necessarily change the actor
Georgian participant case marking interacts with the verbal tense-aspect-mood series. A subject can therefore appear in different cases depending on the construction. The same semantic actor is not guaranteed to keep one fixed surface case throughout a narrative translated from Amharic.
When checking a sequence of past and current actions, follow the named people across the event sequence before judging an unfamiliar ending. Also keep the source's masculine and feminine references explicit where they distinguish two individuals, since Georgian does not reproduce that grammatical gender system. Restoring a name at a participant change is a clearer solution than forcing the target to display an Amharic-style gender contrast it does not normally encode.
Language references