Bhojpuri to Eastern Armenian: polite pronouns and the timing of a past event
Decide which Armenian variety the wording represents
This guide discusses Eastern Armenian, the variety described in Sakayan’s Yerevan State University textbook. Bhojpuri itself has regional grammatical variation: Lohar’s detailed account concerns Bara-Parsa and explicitly discusses differences farther east. Translating into Armenian should therefore involve an actual target construction, rather than treating a shared language label as proof that all regional forms are interchangeable.
Both sources describe rich verbal systems, but their categories do not align word for word. Bhojpuri uses progressive रह raha and completion-related चुक cuka among its verbal components. Eastern Armenian distinguishes simple and compound tense patterns. A Bhojpuri sequence with several verbal elements needs an interpretation of the event before an Armenian participle or auxiliary is selected.
Courtesy changes the pronoun and its accompanying forms
Lohar identifies three degrees of Bhojpuri honorificity. Eastern Armenian distinguishes familiar դու, du, from plural or polite դուք, duk. The respectful Armenian choice takes plural verbal agreement even when only one person is being addressed. A Bhojpuri singular referent is consequently compatible with a plural-shaped Armenian predicate; that is not automatically a translation error.
Sakayan also shows that the contrast extends to other pronoun forms: informal ko and formal or plural dzer mean your, while kez and dzez express to you. These conventional differences matter when a Bhojpuri request mentions both the listener and the listener’s belongings. Selecting a polite opening pronoun but retaining informal forms later would lose the consistency encoded by Bhojpuri honorific agreement.
A past action in progress needs its own Armenian reading
Sakayan contrasts an Armenian imperfect used for an action underway with the aorist used for a bounded past action. Her painting example describes an activity already in progress when somebody entered. Bhojpuri can convey comparable temporal relationships through its progressive construction and the surrounding tense-bearing material, but those source pieces do not translate into one fixed Armenian tense ending.
In a Bhojpuri account of one event interrupting another, identify which activity was underway and which event marks the interruption. Replacing both with completed-event Armenian forms can change their sequence. Conversely, an Armenian ongoing reading should not be inserted merely because the Bhojpuri predicate contains an auxiliary: completion, ability and habitual meaning can also be expressed through multi-part source predicates.
Case follows Armenian relationships, not a copied Bhojpuri marker
Bhojpuri’s postpositional case marking becomes a different combination of Armenian noun forms and adpositions. The Armenian example մոտենում էր քաղաքին means he was approaching the city; the city appears in the form required by the target construction. An English gloss involving to does not establish a universal replacement for a Bhojpuri relationship marker.
Armenian also lacks Bhojpuri’s masculine-feminine grammatical gender contrast, while retaining number, case and definiteness distinctions. A Bhojpuri suffix indicating gender should therefore not generate an invented Armenian gender ending. The translation can correctly lose that particular morphological contrast while still needing a precise case form to keep the participant’s role. Preserve who approaches, receives or acts, even when the surface agreement features differ.
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