Amharic to Yucatec Maya: ownership, counting people, and meaningful vowel marks
A possessive attached to a noun needs a different construction
Amharic can put the owner after the noun as a suffix, while Yucatec Maya places person markers before a possessed noun. The Maya first-person marker in is therefore not a separate translation of an entire Amharic possessed word. The target still needs the noun, and its form may depend on the possessive construction. Translate the relationship expressed by the complete Amharic noun rather than move each visible piece into the same position.
There is a further distinction when ownership stands alone. The UADY beginner course distinguishes possessive markers used with nouns from forms built with tia’al when answering whose something is. Intia’al means that something is mine; bare in does not supply the same answer. An Amharic exchange that first names an object and then identifies its owner can consequently require two different target constructions. Do not shorten the second response to the marker that appeared before the noun in the first sentence.
Counting people calls for a Maya counting expression
An Amharic number followed by a noun is not always reproduced by putting the target dictionary numeral immediately before its noun. Yucatec Maya uses numeral classifiers. INALI’s writing standard illustrates juntúul máak, one person, and ka’atúul máak, two people. The classifier material belongs to the counting expression; it does not mean that the source has mentioned an additional person or a new descriptive quality.
For an Amharic attendance note or invitation, establish whether the number counts individual people, another kind of object, or a measurement. The Maya construction should follow that reading. A people-counting pattern should not be copied into an amount of liquid or a count of unrelated objects simply because the numeral is unchanged. Conversely, removing the classifier to make the translation resemble Amharic more closely loses target grammatical information. Preserve the actual number while allowing the Maya noun phrase to organise that quantity differently.
Latin letters do not make the target a pronunciation approximation
Amharic source text normally uses Ethiopic script, whereas the Maya target uses a Latin-based spelling system with meaningful vowel and consonant distinctions. INALI distinguishes long vowels, high-toned long vowels, rearticulated vowels, and glottalised sounds. Apostrophes and accents in the translated text can therefore represent part of a word rather than quotation punctuation or optional decoration.
The INALI phrase list gives In k’aaba’e’ for introducing one’s name. Preserve the marks in that expression when copying it into a form, message, or saved phrase. Converting the surrounding Amharic introduction into Maya is a language change, but rewriting the person’s actual name is a separate decision. Keep the supplied name identifiable while retaining the target spelling of the introduction. A Latin-only export that strips accents or apostrophes can damage the Maya wording even though every letter still looks readable.
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