Bhojpuri to Norwegian Bokmål: ownership changes the noun phrase in two places
My does not have one fixed target shape
The Bara-Parsa Bhojpuri grammar records हमार as an individual speaker’s possessive. Norwegian Bokmål then requires a choice based on the possessed noun: NTNU teaches min, mi and mitt for different singular genders, with mine for plural belongings. The owner can stay the same while the target possessive changes.
Its examples faren min, mora mi and huset mitt concern the speaker’s father, mother and house. A Bhojpuri passage listing these relationships should not select one target possessive solely from the speaker’s gender. The agreement belongs to the target noun being possessed. Nor does the neuter form with a house imply a different kind of owner.
Moving the possessive changes the noun’s form
NTNU allows both a possessive following the noun and one preceding it. The contrast faren min versus min far shows that a change in order also affects whether the noun takes its definite form. A Bhojpuri noun phrase cannot be rebuilt safely by moving the same unchanged Norwegian words around.
This matters when a source sentence emphasizes an individual relationship. A translator may choose a natural Norwegian order, but it must be a complete target construction. Retaining a definite noun merely because it appeared in another example, while moving its possessive to the front, confuses two documented patterns. The Bhojpuri ownership relation remains constant across the target choice.
A plural-looking source speaker may own something alone
The cited Bhojpuri description records हम as singular I, while हमनी identifies we. A Bokmål rendering should therefore not choose our simply because the source form resembles a plural pronoun familiar from elsewhere. The singular owner interpretation has consequences for the possessive as well as the personal reference.
In a family account, several relatives can be mentioned by one narrator. Their presence does not turn that narrator into a collective owner. Conversely, a genuine source group can jointly refer to one house. Keep the number of possessors separate from the number of possessions before choosing the appropriate Bokmål forms.
A repeated occasion is different from one past period
Bhojpuri aspect and surrounding time expressions also matter when an ownership story contains a when clause. NTNU distinguishes da for a single past happening or period from når for customary or repeated events, including repeated past events. A general English when gloss would not preserve that choice.
A source account of what happened during one stay at a relative’s house differs from a description of what happened whenever the writer visited. The target temporal construction should reflect that distinction rather than automatically selecting the same conjunction for both. Ownership identifies whose house is involved; the time clause identifies how the visits are distributed. Preserving one of those relationships does not compensate for changing the other.
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