Bangla to Amharic: “your name” can require information absent from তোমার
A familiar Bangla owner does not specify gender
Dimock, Bhattacharji, and Chatterjee distinguish Bangla তোমার, ordinary second-person possession, from আপনার, honorific possession. These forms identify an address relationship without selecting a masculine or feminine owner. An Amharic translation can require a further distinction even when the source clearly refers to just one listener.
The Peace Corps manual contrasts ስምህ and ስምሽ for your name when addressing a male and female person respectively. The name itself has not changed gender; the suffix identifies the possessor. A Bangla question using তোমার নাম therefore cannot justify one suffix solely from the noun নাম. The person addressed supplies the relevant information.
Respect and gender are different target choices
The Amharic manual separately presents respectful second-person forms alongside familiar masculine and feminine forms. Translating Bangla আপনার should therefore preserve its courteous relationship rather than simply select the familiar masculine form as a universal default. Familiarity and gender answer different questions.
The Bangla course also illustrates third-person তিনি for either he or she with honorific value. Amharic’s ordinary third-person pronouns and possessive endings distinguish male from female, while its respectful forms offer another construction. A source respectful reference does not automatically identify the person’s gender, nor does a target gender choice by itself preserve the source respect.
A verb ending can identify a speaker without a separate pronoun
The University of Texas describes Bangla verbs as carrying person information and illustrates kha-cch-il-am, I was eating. The fuller expression adds ami, I, but the verb can stand without that explicit subject. A short Bangla source that lacks আমি should therefore not automatically become an impersonal Amharic statement.
The same analysis separates the root from continuous aspect, past tense, and first-person marking. Those contributions must remain distinct: eating at a past moment is not the same claim as a habitual present meal. If a target sentence needs a participant or agreement choice, recover the source information from the verb instead of assuming that an omitted pronoun leaves everything unspecified.
Attached possession does not mean that a word was lost
The Amharic manual illustrates ቤት becoming ቤቴ, house becoming my house, through a possessive suffix. Bangla আমার before a noun may thus become material attached to the translated noun. The lack of a separately spaced target word corresponding to আমার does not establish an omission.
This differs from the unresolved gender of a second- or third-person owner. আমার positively identifies the first-person owner, whereas তোমার and তার can leave a gender distinction open. Compare the grammatical contribution of the source possessive with the target ending, rather than expecting all Bangla possessive words to occupy separate positions in Amharic.
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