Bangla to Marathi: my changes with what is owned, while respect changes personal reference
আমার does not select one fixed Marathi possessive
Dimock, Bhattacharji, and Chatterjee give Bangla আমার for my. Marathi requires a further choice in an ordinary possessive expression: the form agrees with the thing or person possessed. Kaushik Lele’s ownership lesson illustrates masculine माझा, feminine माझी, and neuter माझे.
Thus माझा मुलगा means my son, while माझी मुलगी means my daughter. The person speaking has not changed. The ending follows the possessed noun. A Bangla sentence listing someone’s children can therefore require several Marathi possessive forms even though the source owner expression remains the same. Selecting the form according to the speaker’s gender would answer the wrong grammatical question.
Adding another relationship changes the earlier form
Lele’s lesson also illustrates possessive chains. My son’s school is माझ्या मुलाची शाळा, rather than the independent my son expression followed by an unchanged marker for school. Earlier words take forms appropriate to their place inside the larger relationship.
This is useful for Bangla expressions containing several linked owners, such as a child’s school or a school’s address. Translating each short source phrase separately and concatenating the results can preserve the vocabulary while breaking the target chain. The final possessed noun and the intervening relationships must be considered together, rather than treating every Marathi possessive ending as an invariant equivalent of a Bangla genitive.
A respectful third person still needs a gender decision
The University of Chicago’s Marathi in Context distinguishes familiar and respectful reference, including masculine and feminine respectful forms. The Bangla course, by contrast, presents তিনি as an honorific third-person pronoun that can refer to either a man or a woman.
A source sentence can therefore clearly convey respect while leaving a Marathi reference choice unresolved. Respectful masculine and feminine target forms cannot be selected merely from the fact that the source uses an honorific. If a Bangla paragraph consistently discusses one person, the Marathi reference should follow the same established person, without introducing an unsupported change of gender from one sentence to another.
Second-person respect and group inclusion are separate choices
Marathi in Context gives तू as a familiar second-person pronoun and तुम्ही as the respectful form. The visual resemblance between Bangla তুমি and Marathi तुम्ही should not be mistaken for identical social meaning. The Bangla course identifies তুমি as ordinary address and আপনি as respectful address; the target relationship has to be selected by function.
The Chicago course separately distinguishes inclusive and exclusive first-person plural reference. Bangla আমরা identifies we without itself deciding whether the listener belongs to that group. The University of Texas Bangla grammar page also explains how person information can reside in the verb, allowing an overt subject to be absent. Recovering a first-person group from such a source is therefore only one step: a Marathi translation can still need to establish whether that group includes the listener. This decision concerns membership, independently of the courtesy expressed toward any individual.
Language references