Assamese to Slovenian: name the two people instead of relying on “we”
A dual form still leaves a membership question
Slovenian has productive dual reference. Greenberg’s grammar lists midva for a first-person pair and mi for a larger first-person group, with gender-related alternatives in the paradigm. An Assamese plural plan therefore needs its actual number established before the target pronoun is judged.
But a dual alone does not establish whether the pair includes the person reading the message. Greenberg illustrates adding a named companion in a construction meaning “Miran and I are going to Lendava.” This is useful when an Assamese “we” refers to the speaker and someone else rather than the speaker and the addressee.
For a travel invitation, identify the group explicitly in your own understanding before translating. If the surrounding exchange supplies the members, include it. A target reference to two people should not be accepted as accurate merely because the source conversation happens to mention two names somewhere.
Kinship marking identifies an owner as well as social treatment
Bharadwaj contrasts tomar deutara and aponar deutak for your father, with neutral versus respectful second-person reference. The personal suffix on the Assamese kinship noun participates in that distinction. It does not mean that the father is two people, nor that every formal-looking form refers to plural owners.
In a Slovenian translation of a message about two people’s father, establish whether one shared father or separate fathers are intended. The Assamese kinship suffix helps identify the possessor relationship; Slovenian dual agreement concerns the relevant pair. Those are different dimensions. A pair of addressees does not automatically create two fathers.
For a source question directed respectfully to one visitor about their father, the Slovenian target must preserve one addressee and the correct family relationship. Greenberg’s discussion of respectful plural-looking forms explains why formality alone cannot supply the count. The actual person reference and the kinship construction have to be interpreted together.
Counting people and respecting them are different instructions
Bharadwaj illustrates du-zɔn manuh for two men and tini-ɡɔraki mohila for three women. The numeral supplies the count, while the classifier contributes information about the people and their social treatment. In Slovenian the difference between two and three can change grammatical number throughout the clause. Translating only the human noun would discard the evidence needed for that choice.
The honorific classifier -ɡɔraki can refer to either men or women. It therefore cannot select a masculine Slovenian agreement form merely because it is respectful. Recover the people described by the noun, separately from the respectful attitude expressed by the classifier. A report about two respected women must preserve both their actual pair and their identity without deriving either from formality alone.
This also separates two kinds of ambiguity in an Assamese invitation. If its subject pronoun is missing and only an honorific verb remains, the count may genuinely need context. If a numeral explicitly counts the participants, that evidence is already present and should not be overridden by a general assumption about polite agreement. Slovenian number should follow the referent count, while the respectful wording follows the relationship between the participants.
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