Bhojpuri to Māori: identify who belongs to the group before choosing “we”
हम can still refer to one person
Thakur’s Bhojpuri grammar distinguishes singular हम from plural हमनी and related forms. Māori first-person singular au or ahau must therefore remain available when translating a source statement beginning with हम. Reading the Bhojpuri form as Hindi plural हम would create a group that the speaker never mentioned.
Once the source genuinely refers to a group, Māori asks more questions than singular versus plural. Its pronouns distinguish exactly two people from three or more, and whether the listener belongs to the speaker’s group. A Bhojpuri plural form alone does not specify all those distinctions. The target choice must come from the actual participants in the event.
Two people and several people need different forms
Kupu’s pronoun table contrasts tāua, the speaker and one listener, with māua, the speaker and one other person excluding the listener. For larger groups, the corresponding contrast is tātou versus mātou. These forms identify membership rather than degrees of friendliness or respect.
The short contrasts tāua versus māua and tātou versus mātou are useful when a Bhojpuri हमनी statement concerns a shared journey. If the listener is joining, an inclusive form can be appropriate; if the speaker is reporting an arrangement with someone else, an exclusive form preserves that exclusion. A source plural should not automatically turn every person reading the translation into a participant.
Honorific Bhojpuri address does not establish a Māori head count
Thakur records respectful रउआ as well as forms explicitly addressing more than one person, including रउआ लोग. Māori distinguishes singular koe, dual kōrua, and plural koutou. A respectful Bhojpuri address to one individual consequently should not become a Māori dual or plural merely because the source has honorific agreement.
The reverse error loses participants: an instruction to two actual addressees calls for a different target pronoun from an instruction to one. Māori’s number distinction concerns the people involved. Bhojpuri’s honorific distinction additionally concerns their relationship with the speaker; the two grammatical systems divide the information differently.
A first-person owner introduces a second kind of relationship
Bhojpuri हमार identifies a singular first-person possessor in Thakur’s paradigm. Māori possessive selection can additionally distinguish a- and o-category relationships. Kupu gives tāku and tōku as contrasting forms for “my.” Their difference is not whether the owner is a man or woman, nor whether the owner is singular or plural.
The category depends on the relationship to the possessed entity: Kupu places such items as pens in a, while shelter and transport belong in o. It also notes that a horse may be classified differently as a pet or as transport. Translating a Bhojpuri possessive therefore requires identifying what the relationship means, rather than attaching one fixed Māori form to every occurrence of हमार.
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