Amharic to Sesotho: identify the noun class before checking a possessive
The possessed noun chooses the linking form
Amharic attaches owner information through possessive suffixes. Sesotho possession commonly uses a concord linking the possessed noun to its owner, and that concord depends on the possessed noun’s class. The FSI course contrasts motho oa-bobeli, the second person, with letsatsi la-bobeli, the second day. Although these particular expressions are ordinal illustrations, they make the class-dependent linking pattern visible.
For an Amharic phrase identifying somebody’s possessions, do not select one Sesotho linking form for every noun merely because the owner stays the same. A person’s name after the link does not determine the class of the object owned. First identify the noun being described, then interpret its agreement. A different concord before the same owner can be correct; an unchanged concord across unrelated noun classes can be the real problem. This is a different question from the Amharic owner suffix’s person or gender.
Plurality can change the beginning and the agreement
Amharic uses its own noun plural patterns, while Sesotho often changes a noun-class prefix. Molamu and melamu illustrate stick and sticks. The target distinction is therefore not simply an ending added after an unchanged source-equivalent stem. Associated agreement can change too. A translation of an Amharic count should be checked across the noun phrase, rather than at the last characters of the noun.
This is especially useful for a source list containing one item from one class and several items from another. Reusing the first target agreement pattern throughout can make later entries inconsistent. Research on Sesotho nominal agreement also documents contexts with reduced or absent noun prefixes; the agreement system is not reducible to copying the noun’s visible beginning. Where a form looks shorter than expected, identify its construction before assuming that part of the word was accidentally deleted.
Human reference does not require Amharic gender distinctions
Amharic distinguishes masculine and feminine person reference. Sesotho eena can refer to either a male or a female person. A common target form for two different source pronouns therefore does not by itself indicate a mistranslated identity. The source’s names, roles, and event relationships can supply information that the target pronoun does not explicitly repeat.
In an Amharic account where a woman hands an item to a man, check who performs the next action before accepting a sequence of Sesotho third-person references. A repeated name at the transition can preserve a distinction that the source expressed through gender. Do not replace Sesotho noun-class agreement with male-female assumptions: the classes organise a wider system of nouns and grammatical relationships. The owner, the object, and the actor may each be different referents, and their roles must remain distinct even where the target does not encode the same gender information.
Language references