Bulgarian to Welsh: the owner can change the beginning of the owned word
Look beyond the identical Welsh possessive word
Welsh ei can mean his or her, but its effect on a following word differs. The Learn Welsh grammar contrasts ei gar e, his car, with ei char hi, her car. The initial consonant change helps express the ownership relationship. A Bulgarian translator should not treat the two target phrases as interchangeable because the possessive itself is spelled identically.
Bulgarian distinguishes possessive stems for his and her, and also changes their forms to agree with the owned noun. For example, неговата кола identifies his car, while нейната кола identifies her car. The feminine agreement belongs to the car noun in both phrases; the distinct stems identify the owners. Welsh redistributes that information through its own possessive and mutation pattern.
Do not confuse the owned noun’s gender with the owner’s gender
Bulgarian possessive paradigms label masculine, feminine, neuter, and plural forms according to the entity possessed. A masculine owner can own a grammatically feminine car or book. Using the adjective ending alone to decide between Welsh his and her would therefore give the item to the wrong person.
The same issue arises when a Bulgarian list moves between several possessions of one owner. The source endings can change while the owner stays constant. Keep the owner fixed through the Welsh translation, then check the mutation each following word actually requires. Do not interpret every source inflection as a change of person.
This is useful in lost-property messages, where his bag and her car may appear close together. Read the full Bulgarian possessive, including its stem, rather than letting a nearby feminine noun determine the Welsh ownership choice.
Own can point back to a subject rather than name a new owner
Bulgarian reflexive possessives such as свой and its agreeing forms refer back to the clause’s subject. Leafgren’s grammar explains that in third-person reflexive reference this distinguishes the subject’s own possessions from possessions associated with another person. A source phrase containing the reflexive should not be replaced by a target ownership reading chosen from the nearest male or female name.
Before selecting the Welsh possessive, identify the subject of the Bulgarian clause and determine whether that subject is the owner. A sentence about Stefan and his own children differs from one about Stefan and another man’s children. Correctly translating the noun children does not preserve that distinction by itself.
Once the owner is established, check the Welsh phrase as a whole. The Learn Welsh material shows that different possessives trigger different initial changes, including nasal mutation after fy and soft mutation after dy. A dictionary’s unmutated noun is only the starting form.
For this direction, the reliable sequence is owner, relationship to the clause’s subject, then Welsh mutation. It prevents two independent mistakes: assigning the possession to someone else and keeping a correct possessive beside the wrong initial form of its noun.
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