Bhojpuri to Rundi: an unchanged noun can still have a different count
One cow and several cows can share the noun form
Betty Ellen Cox’s Kirundi lessons contrast inka yanje with inka zanje, meaning my cow and my cows. The visible noun remains the same while the possessive agreement changes. A Bhojpuri translation cannot therefore rely on a changed Rundi noun spelling as the only evidence that source plurality has been preserved.
If a source writer lists several animals belonging to one person, the target phrase needs the plural interpretation without turning the owner into a group. If the source concerns one animal, choosing the plural agreement would introduce more animals even though the noun itself might look unchanged. Count and ownership have to be resolved independently.
The possessed noun controls the connecting material
Cox explains that a possessive particle follows the thing possessed and agrees with it rather than with the owner. The target grammar thus demands information about which noun is being related to a possessor. A Bhojpuri name identifying the owner cannot determine the particle by itself.
A source paragraph about a teacher’s child and the teacher’s gardens keeps the owner constant while describing different kinds and numbers of possessed entities. In Rundi, repeating one connecting form across both merely because the teacher stays the same can disregard the target noun-class relationship. The ownership is unchanged, but its grammatical expression must fit each possessed noun.
Family labels can require the surrounding relationship
The Kirundi lessons give umugabo with both man and husband meanings, and umugore with both woman and wife meanings. A Bhojpuri sentence about a person should therefore not be interpreted as establishing a marriage relationship just because the target noun can also name a spouse.
This is useful when source material describes neighbours, visitors or relatives together. Identify whether the Bhojpuri wording asserts somebody’s spouse or simply refers to an adult person. A target noun with more than one documented interpretation can be suitable, but the surrounding construction should not accidentally attach that person to an owner or partner absent from the source.
An individual narrator is not a plural owner
The Bara-Parsa Bhojpuri grammar lists हम as singular I and हमार as singular my; हमनी marks a group. A Rundi possessive should retain the actual source owner count rather than importing a plural interpretation from another language’s familiar pronoun.
The same distinction affects action statements accompanying the possessions. Cox documents singular and plural human subject prefixes on verbs, so an account of one owner working differs from one about several people working. Do not let plural belongings dictate a plural actor, or let a group of actors determine the number of one shared animal. The target noun phrase and predicate express related but separate parts of the Bhojpuri event. Keeping those roles distinct is particularly important where the Rundi noun itself supplies no visible singular–plural contrast.
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